Ark Royal - Arise (Review)

Have you already started to think that I have only well-known projects? No. Today I have newcomers with a rather pompous name and big ambitions. More precisely, their EP, released on August 14.

My Rating: 69/100 Best Song: Holy Blood

Usually I insert in this part some kind of resonance in the spirit of “newcomers are often subject to the survivorship bias” and the like. But here I will get right to the point. First thing you can notice is a pretty standard idea. Here you can hear patterns characteristic of heavy / power metal and also in some segments there are extreme vocal techniques. It's difficult to single out one thing in the structure - compositions stand out little, although at the same time they are quite diverse. The listener may be tormented by the feeling of deja vu and this can be understood - such an idea is far from new.

Сomposer's work ... It's hard for me to say exactly ... It's noticeable that the album was created with the aim of evoking a large number of emotions from the listener, and not with the aim of conveying ideas of high art (although there are hints of the latter). Accordingly, the composer thought of only pathos, high speed and extreme vocal techniques. I can’t call such an idea a good one, since such solutions erase many shades.

But the vocalist is good. High notes don't sound very good - it feels like the vocal parts are not exactly designed for the vocalist's range. Or the fact that there was simply no sheet music with vocal parts, but was just a lyrics. Nevertheless, we can say that the vocalist has good abilities. A separate topic is extreme vocal techniques - it's not entirely clear why they are needed. However, to hide the vocalist flaws, this will do.

Instrumental parts can hardly be called very interesting, although the performance is good. The first thing you can notice is guitars. Guitar tone is flawless, and the guitar parts sound impressive. However, the structures of guitar parts are quite simple - I realized how this is played during the first listening. Now about bassist - he's good. Bass line are relatively diverse, although there are not particularly bright segments. And the most interesting thing that can be said about the bassist regarding guitarists is that a big bet on guitars is noticeable, but it did not justified. This reminded me of the situation with one of the albums of band Heterogenous Andead: there was a very high bet on guitar, but little attention to synthesizer (which sounded much better than the guitar). However, rhythm section as a whole is very powerful. And the drums continue this pattern. As befits similar methods for solving artistic tasks, the intensity of the drums is very high.

These newcomers are clearly pursuing high achievements. Why do I think so? Because there are very characteristic errors for this. And if, for example, bands such as Lovebites see and hide them, then these guys only have to do it. In the meantime, I see the maximum amount of pathos. I know many projects that use similar tactics, for example, Phantom Excaliver. And you can’t look at these freaks without a mixed sense of laughter and pain. Fortunately, for a project Ark Royal this is not taken to such an extreme. And if we talk about this EP, then this is just a good job. That is, in this release it's difficult to find something very interesting, but it feels like the work is well done. At the end of last year, I saw good prospects for these newcomers. And this work makes me think that I'm not mistaken.