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Starborn: Born By The Wind [EP]
Starborn Born By The Wind EP CD Album Review

Starborn: Born By The Wind [EP]

Heavy/Power Metal
3.0/5.0

Hailing from Newcastle in the Northeast of England, upstart metal band Starborn offers their first EP of tunes, Born By The Wind. The band is after more traditional European and American power metal. My advice: don't give up you day jobs, at least not yet.

Starborn Born By The Wind EP Photo

Starborn: outdoors.

Starborn's take on traditional power metal is to offer something more gritty and fundamental. Power metal can have many forms, but their metal is not some smarmy and slick symphonic variety. Rather it's more rumbling, raw, and dirty, having a strong kinship with it's roots in speed metal. With one listen, you'll find the guitar riffs and rhythm section rough and tumble tough as they hurtle along. With the production, that isn't all that fancy, you end up with sound similar to the metal found on cassettes during the heyday of tape trading in the early Eighties. Raw and unfiltered, but also sometimes feeling clumsy, like things don't connect.

Alternatively, Starborn tries to offer some snappy guitar solos in each song. Though not entirely technical, they are adequate. Lyricist and vocalist Bruce Turnbull attempts a classic heavy metal sound, ala a Dickinson, but sounds somewhere between raw screamo and just plain angry. While I get the rough texture they're after for their power metal, I think it would be difficult for them to sustain it and a listener to enjoy a full album of it. You can still deliver that raw gritty energy even with some polish in production. Nevertheless, Starborn is on to something, they just haven't arrived yet. Hopefully, they'll press on.


Starborn - Born By The Wind EP



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In Short

With Born By The Wind, Starborn's power metal approach is raw and gritty, a rough and tumble ride of riffs and rhythm section with smatterings of snappy guitar solos.

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