Sirenia – The Seventh Life Path

The Seventh Life Path is the 7th Studio album from Norwegian symphonic metal band Sirenia, founded in 2001 by Morten Veland (ex-Tristania). I was lucky enough to catch these guys live last year at Metal Female Voices Festival; they put on a powerful live performance and I was impressed by Ailyn‘s vocals live.

The album kicks off with the instrumental track ‘Seti‘ which sets the mood for the album; it has a powerful yet haunting feel to it. What I liked about this album is that there are a number of different styles throughout: from very beautiful symphonic moments, to some heavier Gothic metal. This is also reflected in the vocals, with Ailyn providing the softer side, and Morten being the heavy growls. It works as by having two vocalists it adds some range, but I found that individually the vocals lacked variety. Therefore I found when listening to this album that I got lost in some of the tracks with it getting a bit too similar at times. I find that is a problem with a lot of female fronted symphonic bands out there; there are a lot around and more need to push the boundaries for the genre. It has its beautiful moments however, it just gets a little lost for me as there is nothing that really makes it stand out; I’m still hopeful that we are going to get a breakthrough in this genre soon as it really needs something new to refresh it.

One thing that I did find refreshing is that a lot of the tracks on this album didn’t just stick to the typical format that so many bands cling to to try and get a hit… verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge and so on which is so predictable in music of any type. The best track for me is ‘The Silver Eye‘; the main theme to the song had a killer groove I got stuck in my head and I found it to be the track with the strongest vocals. They really complimented each other.

Overall I did enjoy the album but it did get a bit stale after a few spins. It has some great moments but it just lacks the edge on so much that is out there already. You know that they are all very talented musicians; I just feel they should have been braver and tried to do something a bit different to stand out more amongst the other female fronted symphonic metal bands.

Track listing

1. Seti
2. Serpent
3. Once my Light
4. Elixir
5. Sons of the North
6. Earendel
7. Concealed Disdain
8. Insania
9. Contemptuous Quitus
10. The Silver Eye

Sirenia are;

Morten Veland – guitars and vocals
Ailyn – female vocals
Jonathan A. Perez – drums
Jan Erik Soltvedt – guitars

Links

www.facebook.com/sirenia
www.twitter.com/sireniaofficial
www.sirenia.no