EMBRACE THE STORM

Embrace The Storm is the debut album from multinational female fronted heavy metal act Stream of Passion. Stream of Passion is another one of Arjen Anthony Lucassen´s ( Ayreon, Ambeon, Star One) projects and features musicians from as different countries as The Netherlands, USA, Mexico and Brazil. The music is build around Mexican female vocalist Marcela Bovio´s beautiful voice. Arjen discovered her and she guested on Ayreon´s The Human Equation album from 2004.

The music is very traditional heavy metal/pop/rock structured and I wouldn´t say that I find this album progressive at all, so even putting it in the Prog-Related catagory is stretching the definition of what is progressive IMO. The only reason for adding Stream of Passion is that Arjen Anthony Lucassen is involved. The songs have chugging heavy metal riffs and lots of melodic elements both in the guitar playing and the omnipresent piano motifs but it´s Marcela Bovio´s melodic melody lines and emotional vocal performance that everything evolves around. The music is not as symphonic as the usual projects from Arjen, but there´s still an unmistakable Arjen flavour to many of the songs. The overall sound is pretty grand.

The songs are very formulaic in structure and you´ll have to look other places for challenging musical experiences. You get what you hear and nothing more. Melodic female fronted heavy metal. Stream of Passion sometimes remind me of Evanescence and that comparison is only strengthened because of the similarities between Marcela Bovio´s and Amy Lee´s voices. All songs are of high compositional quality which is no surprise when Arjen is involved, but the album seriously lack in variation and highlights.

The musicianship is one of the greatest assets on Embrace The Storm as all musicians are well playing and accomplished. The performances are strong but nothing out of the ordinary for the style though.

The production is a typical well crafted and professional modern heavy metal production. Sharp and clean.

Objectively seen this is a good album, but I can´t say I enjoy it much on a personal level. It´s simply the style of music played that is a bit too generic IMO. Among the hundreds of other female led heavy metal acts out there Stream of Passion is just another one IMO. It´s not that I´m happy about it but I can´t give Embrace The Storm less than a 3 star rating because of the high musical quality.