UTOPIA

Being a debut album, this piece of works is actually quite awesome. It shows a great potential that the band have and of course a very good starting point. Unexpect is a great band with a really unique styles; they mix a lot of element in their music such as metal, classic, and some other styles, not to mention the progressive elements.

The tracks here features lots of growling voices and heavy guitar riffs similar to death metal styles combined with powerful and speedy drumming like in a power metal band. There’re also clean female voices and also some nice keyboard melody which makes this album has an interesting variations of styles. For example, ‘Vespers Gold’ is a strong opening track that kicks out with some heavy and speedy music from the beginning. This is a quite powerful and awesome opening track that features some cool guitar solos. Compare to ‘Palace of Dancing Souls’, a short, beautiful instrument track that features nice piano melody with some orchestrations. Although this track is clearly not a representative of their overall works, but it’s nice to know that the band actually capable of doing something like this too. Another great sample of their music is probably ‘In the Velvet Coffins We Sleep’, which has a great combination of heavy riffs, great solos, violin sounds, and some nice piano melody. Moreover, with a great opening track also comes a great ending track. ‘The Revival’ is probably the ultimate track of the album, with some interesting tempo shifting, great guitar solos, violin sounds, etc. this track is really awesome! The rest of the album are all great tracks too, the only track that I prefer less than the others is ‘Metamorphosis’, because it somehow a bit too heavy and raw for my taste. It’s not a really bad track though; I still can enjoy it sometimes.

However, this album isn’t without a flaw. The sounds qualities aren’t really good due to production. Vocals are a rather weak in some parts, especially the female vocals. Perhaps the male vocal could sing a little in clean voices rather than growling/screaming all the time, but that’s not really a big problem for me actually. Other than that, I don’t think there are more things that could make you don’t enjoy the album very much. Overall, this is still a good album actually, considering a few weaknesses that I pointed out above, though this album isn’t really accessible for all because of their unique music style. For those who like avant- garde and metal music, this album could suit to your taste.