Torture Tunes
Crimson Sun
Towards The Light
Crimson Sun is a modern melodic metal band from Kotka, Finland – but they are on a Canadian record label interestingly enough. Although they’ve been putting out music since 2006 (albeit under a slightly different lineup) Towards The Light is their first full-length album.
Crimson Sun have a very polished release in Towards The Light. Their melodic style leans towards symphonic metal with their use of grandiose chord progressions and Sini Seppälä’s clean and soaring vocals. Track one, “The Storm”, has a very punchy and dynamic rhythm in the verses and the vocals weave into it nicely. It builds to an exalting chorus (hence my comment about symphonic influences) that seems to be indicative of their song writing style on this album.
I enjoyed the following mid-tempo number, “Eye Of The Beholder”. Showcasing the gamut Sini’s vocal prowess, I found this track to have a little more depth than the previous one and I like the direction that the melody takes throughout the song. “Awaken” is similar in song structure and theme to the first track. This is my main criticism of Towards The Light, the music is very formulaic most of the time. It would be refreshing for them to switch up the structure of their music periodically to alleviate their predictability. On the plus side, their music is very uplifting – especially the punchy and dynamic title track itself "Towards The Light".
“Portrait Of A Ghost” offers a welcome change in pace after the preceding five tracks. It’s a little moodier and a heavier in a gothic sense with a gentle piano break to ease the tension. The following three songs continue on Crimson Sun’s aforementioned formula with a few decent melodies now and again, but sadly nothing catchy enough to make any of the tracks memorable and nothing unique enough to make them particularly interesting. The epic closing number “Memories Burning” is a longer track with a few interesting breaks and changes throughout. With a majority of the tracks clocking in at less than four minutes (a good thing!) “Memories Burning” comes close to a whopping seven minutes!
Crimson Sun
Towards The Light
(Maple Metal Records)
Written by: Richard Leggatt
7.5 out of 10
I almost feel a need to rate this album’s technical merits separately from the song writing. The production quality is quite good, and the performances are outstanding (Sini has a great voice). However, it falls short of the mark in the originality department. I think the highlight track for me was “Eye Of The Beholder”.
The music approaches Christian rock in both its’ sound and choice of lyrics. There’s a fair bit of religious allegory present in a few of the tracks – the most obvious being the title of the album itself. But it’s cleverly handled with agnostic ambiguity.
All this said, I’m intrigued to hear how their sound will evolve. I get the impression that Crimson Sun put on a great live performance.
Richard Leggatt, HMS
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