Evershine – Renewal

Pop-metal seems to be the new thing, these days. Softer metal bands that are meant to appeal to a wider audience are becoming ever more common, (The City Divided, Dead By April). Therefore, the fact that Italian metal masters Evershine are grasping this genre with both hands, and grasping it well, their first full length album entitled Renewal, should really shoot the band to metal stardom.

In fact, in some ways, this album leans more towards the pop than the metal. Renewal is filled with a lot of vocal work that wouldn’t sound out of place in a nineties boy-band (meant in the nicest possible way) and music that will appeal to pretty much everybody. Musically, this album has a little bit of everything, it’s got speedy solos for the shred-happy among listeners, double kick heavy drums for the metalheads out there, excellent synth work for the more dance orientated, it’s really quite versatile. The epic choruses work well in conjunction with the more down to earth vocals, giving it a pop-power-metal sort of vibe.

In a nutshell, Evershine sound a heck of a lot like Dragonforce. Not that that’s a bad thing.

There are slower aspects to the music, too, which Dragonforce don’t seem to have, and this shows off Evershine’s ability as musicians to write songs that vary from each other. Angel Killer is a real testament to this, as is A Chance to Be Free.

Bad points – not everyone is going to like this. Some people might find it a little too ‘poppy’ to listen to, and others might think the band are packing a little too much into their sound. The overarching sound on Renewal does end up smacking a little of overtrying, with the epic piano sounds, warbled, extra-passionately-sung vocals and overly-epic choruses. To be honest, Evershine need to take their foot off the gas pedal a little bit and stop trying to convince listeners so hard.

So, overall, Renewal is a triumphant, epic and powerful sounding album, and is obviously a culmination of a lot of determination and hard work, to create something monumental sounding and very appealing. It needs a bit of work, especially on the vocals, but on the whole it’s an excellent, power-pop-metal (that’s a mouthful) album.

Rating: 6/10

 

Track Listing:

Evershine

Angel Killer

Run

Demon’s Ride

The Storm

A Chance to Be Free

Here We Come

Faith and Dreams

Where Heroes Lie

 

Evershine are:

Emanuele Matricardi

Marco Lopresti

Nicola Petricca

Simone Cardini

Ivan Palmieri

About Del Preston

So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweet shop on the edge of town. So - we go. And - it's closed. So there's me and Keith Moon and David Crosby, breaking into that little sweet shop, eh. Well, instead of a guard dog, they've got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shop owner and his son, that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business really. But sure enough, I got the M&Ms and Ozzy went on stage and did a great show.