



To be fair I'm surprised we've gone this far into the process before our first spot of symphonic metal, but boy is this one a doosie! It's got all the ingredients - chugging, middle-of-the-road guitars, staccato keyboards pretending to be strings, and a post-trauma libretto about getting everything back on track again and coming back stronger than ever. Yep, every genre trope is suitably ticked off the list in double quick time. But then there's the singer.We can't quite work out if he's a rock singer with operatic pretensions, or a tenor who never quite made the grade, but he's not so much fallen between two stools as slipped down the back of the radiator just a little bit too far to hook out with your nan's longest knitting needle. To be fair to the lad though, I think it's the song that's giving him issues.For a start, there's far too many syllables for a song of this tempo, which leaves him all a bit one-notey and breathless, trying to catch up with himself. For another, it scans like it was meant for reading more than singing, which again can give a boy heckish delivery difficulties. But we shouldn't mock. The thumbnail of the band on the TVR website makes them look earnest and intense, so we're bound to be in for an Apocalypse-worthy performance one way or another. We just hope there's candles. And flames. Lots of flames. Mind your hair though, fellas. There's a reason that Rammstein have all got shorn locks.