Stream of Passion – Darker days

“Darker days”  is the third studio album from Stream of Passion.  As the band is a female fronted symphonic metal band, you might have assumed that they originate from the Netherlands (home of so many great bands of this genre including Epica, Within Temptation, Delain, Revamp and many more, and you’d be mostly right.  Most of the band are Dutch, but singer Marcela Bovio is actually Mexican.

Marcela has a beautiful voice and this album once again allows her to demonstrate it.

“The Scarlet mark” features a great guitar solo, and the guitar generally is more prominent than in some of the other tracks.
“Spark” is a slower acoustic number with Marcela’s singing accompanied by piano and violin, and this serves as a nice change of pace partway through the album.
“Our Cause” and “Darker days” are unusual in that they are both sung in a mixture of Spanish and English – its quite rare for a band to sing in multiple languages on an album and very rare for them to mix languages within a song.
“Nadie lo ve” is sung completely in Spanish.

The CD booklet does include the lyrics for all the songs and where they are in Spanish, the english translation is helpfully included.

The album is produced  (plus mixed and mastered) by Joost van den Broek, the former keyboard player from Dutch symphonic metal legends, After Forever.
With a running time of 58 minutes, the album feels good value for money compared to many new albums from other bands clocking in at a much shorter 35-45 minutes.

This is another great album from Stream of Passion – definitely recommended for fans of the genre.

Rating: 9/10

Track listing:

1. Lost
2. Reborn
3. Collide
4. The scarlet mark
5. Spark
6. Our cause
7. Darker days
8. Broken
9. This moment
10. Closer
11. The mirror
12. Nadie Lo Ve
13. The world is ours

14. The Hunt (Bonus track on digit-pack version)