Brainstorm - Firesoul

Published March 31 2014

*=Staff's pick	Erased By The Dark Firesoul* Descendants Of The Fire* Entering Solitude* Recall The Real Shadowseeker Feed Me Lies What Grows Inside The Chosen* …And I Wonder

Genre	Heavy/Power Metal	Andy B. Franck	Vocals
Tracks	10	Torsten Ihlenfeld	Guitar
Running time	48 Min.	Milan Loncaric	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	Antonio Ieva	Bass
Release	04 April 2014	Dieter Bernert	Drums
Country	Germany	-	Keyboard
Producer	Achim Köhler
Similar artists	---

Long-time running metal unit Brainstorm returns with its tenth album, two and a half years past the latest release, On The Spur Of The Moment. The band has constantly maintained on a high level with each release the way I see it, but has yet never launched a blasting rocket to draw the bigger masses' attention. I bet you find this situation familiar yourselves, where you dig a band and you can't see why others don't have the same interest for its efforts. The band's label promote this strictly as power metal, but personally I refuse to let this land under that term alone. To me, this is mainly energetic heavy metal with elements or fractions of power metal and that really is a different aspect in terms of type of music.

The Germans hardly present any surprising or groundbreaking material on Firesoul. They pretty much follow the path they positioned in the late nineties. It's heavy, dark and holds a powerful atmosphere. Forty-eight minutes of metal, comprising nine vigorous songs and one slightly more mellow song, which still contains heaviness though, is what we're offered with this release. It's definitely not diverse if you look at the entire record, but each song holds some variation, although the major share of them stick to a fairly fast tempo as they ignite these physical impacts.

Heavy, classic and fast riffs as well as rolling drums dominate the sound picture. Franck's characteristic voice is as usual functioning as both lead and backing vocals, including the parts where he's echoing his own words in a different tune. They have an ability to put together catchy things weaved into an accurate, decisive and massive approach. The material's evenness has often been one of Brainstorm's overall outstanding points and Firesoul is no exception. The band rarely releases bad songs, which in some cases turns out as a disadvantage, as the absolute best songs don't particularly stand out from the majority.

It's straight forward without apparent detours and if you're familiar with this unit's past work, you most likely know what to expect and you are also pretty much able to calculate the outcome of this effort. They are far from being innovative with this release and they remain within their proven frames, which isn't at all unexpected and personally I don't mind them staying within this position. It's an awesome metal experience with great melodies in a powerful appearance.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	3	7	8	8

Summary
8 chalices of 10 - Tobbe