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