A well respected band in Florida scene SOTW sends us this CD to show off their musical prowess. It's their first CD with only 6 songs on it; clocking in at 30 minutes it's as long as albums from other bands. The ability displayed on this S/T album does make me anticipate their 10 song album they are in the process of making now.
The music blends some of the great classical styles from the 80's, from bands such as Iron Maiden, while mixing in a bit of the progressive edge by having a heavy keyboard segment. The quality of the music equally varies with the speed of the music, or so it seems. The slower parts have simple melodies, muted guitars, and almost missing drums and bass at time. More often than not these parts sound as though there is something missing; the production on them could have been a lot better. The faster segments tend to make up this deficiency and sound a lot more full, with the guitar often playing the role of driving force. This loss could easily be accounted for with a richer keyboard track mixed at higher levels, which would likely throw SOTW into the realms of atmospheric music. This wouldn't be particularily bad, since they seem suited well enough to that style.
When it comes right down to it the production of the CD may account for most of the problems with it. The riffs are there, the music is structuraly sound and the vocals are adequate. It's unfortunate that a CD doesn't display their theatrical side of the performance, which appears to be as well acclaimed as, if not more than, the music. Generally a decent hard rock to metal release that while does have it's fallacies, does leave me anticipating the next release.
Seasons Of The Wolf is: Barry Waddell - Guitar, Backup Vocals Wayne Hoefle - Drums Phaedra Rurio - Bass Dennis Ristow - Keyboards, Backup Vocals Wes Waddell - Lead Vocals Web: http://members.aol.com/bloodtree/index.html
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