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Review:
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Winter’s Eve are a brand new British band who are not
afraid to declare their influences, Within Temptation, Nightwish
and Evanescence. Their music explores these avenues creating
a diverse but coherent collection of songs. They take the
essence of Evanescence, particularly with Lena’s passionate
and emotional vocal style and the use of rich string sounds
and atmospheric passages, but their signature sound is far
meatier, with walls of warm fuzzy guitars courtesy of Axeman
Jim, Storm’s throbbing bass, Klepsy’s skilful drum patterns,
and spiralling guitar solos from Pranay. ‘Winter’s Eve’,
‘Angel’, ‘Shadow’ and ‘Spellbound’ are mighty songs that
show influences from powerful gothic bands like Therion
with a ‘Kashmir’ Middle Eastern flavour. The two epic, swaying,
¾ gothic songs ‘As I Fall’, featuring a delightful interlude
with Lena voice accompanied by Storm’s bass arpeggios, and
‘Dust to Dust’, which starts out with a lovely keyboard
motif before really taking off, remind me of fellow Brits,
Hanging Doll. ‘Midnight’, with its twinkling piano figure,
‘Image’, built around a wonderful clean guitar chordal riff
and featuring a superb electric violin solo, and ‘Fade’,
a truly dramatic song with Pranay really letting rip, lean
towards the more Evanescence end of the spectrum with their
melodic verses and powerful choruses. The title track ‘Shards’
is a moody symphonic rocker that rumbles along at a cracking
pace.
The production sound is thunderous and cavernous, with
exemplary instrumental and vocal performances by the entire
band. Their website http://winters-eve.com/
has some samples, and their Myspace is http://www.myspace.com/thewinterseve
. This is a mightily impressive opening gambit that is sure
to appeal to all symphonic metal fans, and is available
for download from iTunes and CD Baby (no news as yet of
a physical release), a Ravenheart recommended 9 out of 10.
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