Borealis
Purgatory
AFM Records
2015
Borealis is a Canadian band counting an almost ten year existence and they‘re currently on their third album. What I hear is an over compressed, triggered, example of prog inspired power metal with average to good performances but an overall generic sound. Everybody praises this or that album as being the strongest album of 2015 and I’ve seen guys foaming in the mouth over this but we all know that the Maiden album will be ending up topping most lists on the strength of it being a release by Iron Maiden, so… why sweat over it…
Borealis sounds like a turbo charged clone of Evergrey, really, in some places reminiscent of the early days of Evergrey actually with their singer/guitarist Matt Marinelli sounding a bit like a doppelganger of Englund in fact. When the band slows down considerably they’re too much like Evergrey clones, simple arrangements and a voice with a nice timbre but not the greatest ability (with a couple of corrections sounding quite apparent) on say “Rest My Child” or “Destiny”, when they push the pedal to the metal, the production doesn’t really help them, so I‘d say they do best when they are balancing between the two, ie the title track or “The Chosen One”.
This is a fairly decent album and the band could really mature to something quite good but the “Evergrey” cloning and the uber-compression need to subside.
Borealis sounds like a turbo charged clone of Evergrey, really, in some places reminiscent of the early days of Evergrey actually with their singer/guitarist Matt Marinelli sounding a bit like a doppelganger of Englund in fact. When the band slows down considerably they’re too much like Evergrey clones, simple arrangements and a voice with a nice timbre but not the greatest ability (with a couple of corrections sounding quite apparent) on say “Rest My Child” or “Destiny”, when they push the pedal to the metal, the production doesn’t really help them, so I‘d say they do best when they are balancing between the two, ie the title track or “The Chosen One”.
This is a fairly decent album and the band could really mature to something quite good but the “Evergrey” cloning and the uber-compression need to subside.