BROKEN MELODY - review added 23rd November 2009
Album Review: Mirroring Identities (2009)
For fans of: Alt Metal... and progressive rock mixed with occasionally deathly vocals
Italian metallers Broken Melody have been around since the first half of 2006. They brought out their first release, the If You Want To Fly EP in the middle of 2007. their first album, Face the World, came only a couple of months later.
Francesco Palmieri on vocals, Roberto Ortu and Emanuele Ninu on guitars and backing vocals, Gabriele Viviani on bass and Francesco Usai on drums play a strange mix of sounds. One moment Mirroring Identities is straight ahead AOR, the next death metal, then it'll head off down a progressive experimental avenue, and suddenly you'll be listening to a classic hard rock album.
If you leave the music playing when you leave the room, by the time you come back it's like someone has switched albums. It isn't as bad as it sounds though. The music is of a decently high quality - certainly a lot better than it should be given the mixed-up messages it sends out. The guys have plenty of talent, especially vocalist Francesco.
Sadly the songs themselves aren't that exciting, and that's where it comes unstuck. There's nothing cr*p on the album, far from it, but there's a lot of so-so averageness. Once the album has played out practically nothing sticks in the mind. It's almost like they've done such a good job making sure Mirroring Identities isn't bad, they forgot to make it good.
The slow 'A Question To Your Heart', the amp-bustingly loud 'Return Denied', the beautiful 'Dark & Light' and the vaguely epic 'Until The End' are the best of the bunch, but overall it's just missing that last few percentage points of magic and individuality. Broken Melody have got the talents to produce something massively, brilliantly enjoyable. Unfortunately this isn't it, but it is heading in the right direction...
Check out... The multitude of sounds and styles.
CD Track List:
01. The Beast Within
02. The Lover Of Innocence
03. I Live Again
04. A Question To Your Heart
05. Breaking The Chains
06. Dreaming Of A New World
07. Return Denied
08. Dark & Light
09. The Life Of A Night
10. Until The End
Artist's website(s): Broken Melody , MySpace
