Black Fate - Deliverance of Soul

This is a “re-release” of Black Fate’s third album, by Ulterium Records, which seems to have signed Sunburst, another band where some key players of Black Fate are involved in. It originally came out in 2009 and features a rather different lineup than that of their latest effort “Between Visions & Lies” with the brother of the drummer handling the guitars in the place of Gus Drax, who took over shortly afterwards, as well as a different bassist and a keyboard player as well, which makes the sound of this album more divided between the guitars and keys and inherently more progressive oriented, despite the album having a fair amount of power metal influences as well. It goes without saying that the band has grown in leaps and bounds over five years and that’s great, but despite its small flaws there isn’t so much discrepancy between the two efforts, despite the severe line-up changes and I must admit that I do find the somewhat more organic vocal production on this album a tiny bit more likeable than the somewhat more processed one on “Between”… the influences here are more like “Conception” without any aping at all, while later there’s a bit of a Kamelot and Conception influence that’s more apparent, but also the approach is changed on “Between” with a heavier and more modern sounding production, both mostly handled by the band’s drummer, who’s actually really progressed here…
 
There are a bunch of pretty good songs here like the pretty dynamic “Dying Freedom”, the slightly more prog, but still power laced “Angry Silent Scream”, the quite fragile but sensational “Wicked” and the substantially heavier and more experimental “Inner Warning of My Soul” with “Fallen” that closes the album being a bit more traditional. While the mix isn’t bad, the mastering has failed to make the whole band sound as thick as it should and while it sounds organic, it’s not as “good as it should be”, without meaning that it’s bad! Far from it, but the band themselves managed to quite perfect all these issues on their next album, which shows a hardworking and ever progressing unit, with a focus on enhancing themselves despite any setbacks or superficial changes. Respect.
 
PS: Just a quick note, I do believe that the soul, being a singular “entity” and not an abstract one, is countable, so it should be “of the soul” in the same way it’s “voice of the soul”…