Review : Arachnes - A New Day :: New Music Review :: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock

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Arachnes A New Day

Progressive/Power Metal

3.0/5.0

Lion Music
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by Craig Hartranft, 07.31.2011

Italy's Arachnes offers their fourth studio album, A New Day, now available for digital download via iTunes from Lion Music. Once more, the Caruso brothers, vocalist Enzo and guitarist Frank (Strings 24), offer listeners a slice European melodic power metal with some obvious progressive flavor. Those latter nuances are noticeable from the start on I Know the Darkness and Big Hearth. Perhaps, however, the most noticeable thing throughout A New Day is weakness of the vocals. I don't think this has anything to do with Enzo Caruso skill; he certainly has talent. Rather, it may be problem in the mix; it's seems flat, nearly stifled throughout. (Or possibly the digital download is sub par.) Unfortunately, that single thing holds this album back from being exceptional (even though it still is standard European prog/power metal).

Otherwise, the music is quite likeable and entertaining if, indeed, the genre is your thing. The aforementioned songs, and also Magic World and Running in an Old Town, offer the required heaviness and brisk pace of power metal. They also mix in fine melody with keyboard highlights and feisty guitar solos (sometimes in play with the synths. Arachnes plays with epic, offering near metal ballads on Into the Fog and the strangely title My Face is Hard.

Yet, the most notable tunes begin with Take Your Life, a more accessible melodic metal arrangement. This is followed by the uplifting symphonic segue Parallel Words. This rolls into the quintessential melodic power metal of The Reason of the Thing, and then the outstanding melodic metal instrumental Your Death. Arachnes closes with a cover of Deep Purple's Fireball (from the album of the same name), and Jon Lord would be proud of the old school organ play.

Arachnes' A New Day is sound and generally entertaining traditional European melodic power metal. At it's best it shows the band's ongoing consistency and creativity.

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