Twilight Guardians - Sintrade
Twilight Guardians formed in 1996. With their third studio album, Sintrade, the Finnish headbangers are a step further in their career. The twelve songs featured on this album make me curious, as I’m a ‘title-man’, if you would call it like that. I like fancy titles of songs. My curiousity even rose to higher levels when I noticed ‘La Isla Bonita’ on the tracklist. Could this be…?
‘Through The Stars’ kicks in with subtle keyboard sounds, which to me sounded strongly like those on Amorphis’ ‘Divinity’. The song was entirely different, though. The voice of Vesa Varitanen is very harmonious and clean.
‘Wanderer’ starts off even more harmonious than the previous song. Again, the pleasant voice of Vesa kicks in. A clean / no guitar first verse and Vesa’s soothing vocals, followed by a catchy chorus made this a song I instantly remembered and liked.
One song that, in my opinion, deserves its own little space in this review is the indeed aforementioned Madonna cover of ‘La Isla Bonita’. I was simply blown away by this song. I think it’s better than the original. It sounds heavy and still has that emotion that Madonna put into it. A big cheers for the guys to mould a famous song like this one into their own sound.
Well, I won’t pick out all of the songs just to say something about them, but there are some things left to say in general.
The overall sound was simply superb. The ‘go’ for this record was clearly done by a good company and yes, by looking at the back of the cardboard cover (yeah yeah, I know. I got one of those cheap promotional copies), the name Spinefarm was mentioned. All of my metal-life I’ve been a fan of Spinefarm bands (Children of Bodom, Dark Tranquillity, Amorphis, etc), so this explained a lot.
Something that caught my attention was that whenever you hear bands playing modern metal, it’s rarely the simple two-guitar, bass, drums thing. In many cases, keyboards or computer effects are woven in between. This mostly irritates me, but T-G did an incredible job of mixing the modern elements of old school heavy metal.
At some points in the songs, Vesa’s Finnish accent makes the lyrics a bit hard to understand. Although this does have its charm, I started to get annoyed by it. Could also be the frustration for not having a booklet with lyrics, though.
All in all I can say this is a good record if you like heavy metal with progressive elements. The record is not too speedy, but does have some up-tempo tracks on it. This gives a balanced whole which appealed to me very much.
The only thing that bothered me is the vocalist’s accent that made some of the lyrics hard to follow and quite frankly, it felt a little awkward while yelling along with them.
The rest is a-okay. Sintrade is a solid record which will attract a lot of new fans.
78/1001Details Spinefarm Records
Released on Sunday Jan 1st, 2006
Metal
Writer @Bastian Blackrain on Thursday Mar 2nd, 2006
Tags: #Twilight Guardians
Tracklisting
1. Through The Stars (5:10)
2. Wanderer (3:48)
3. Skin To Skin (3:27)
4. Still (4:33)
5. My Spoiled Reign (4:18)
6. Never Alone (4:30)
7. Room Of Shadow And Light (4:09)
8. Flawless (4:14)
9. La Isla Bonita (2:58)
10. Inside (4:54)
11. Last Of My Kind (4:49)
12. Land Of The Kings (3:30)
2. Wanderer (3:48)
3. Skin To Skin (3:27)
4. Still (4:33)
5. My Spoiled Reign (4:18)
6. Never Alone (4:30)
7. Room Of Shadow And Light (4:09)
8. Flawless (4:14)
9. La Isla Bonita (2:58)
10. Inside (4:54)
11. Last Of My Kind (4:49)
12. Land Of The Kings (3:30)
Line up
Vesa Virtanen – vocals
Carl-Johan Gustafsson – guitars
Mikko T�ng – bass
Henri Suominen – drums
Jari Pailamo - keyboards
Carl-Johan Gustafsson – guitars
Mikko T�ng – bass
Henri Suominen – drums
Jari Pailamo - keyboards