Today’s post features two new bands that do Melodeath with a light Power Metal angle of attack in the style of Mercenary or Tracedawn. And because the former released a new record this year, that we haven’t yet featured, we’ve got a shot of that as well.

Avenie – Funeral for a Dream

When dealing with Melodeath, there really has to be at least one Finnish or Swedish band involved. In today’s case that role is taken up by Avenia, who call Finland their home. On their homepage, you can read they’ve factually existed for over ten years now. However, none of the original members remains and so it’s actually just a whole new band.

In the new line-up, we find members and ex-members of a bunch of bands familiar to us: Farmakon, Kiana, Before the Dawn, Crystalic and Soulfallen and also of Katra and Days of Disgrace which we haven’t yet written about. That’s such a rich heritage that I’m just going to save myself the trouble of figuring out who came from where and all that.

The band in question has eventually managed to record a full album, which carries the title Sombre Embrace. In February of this year they released it as a download. The effort contains ten songs of typical Finnish Melodeath. Nothing extraordinary, but despite that new discoveries in this genre rarely manage to captivate me these days, Avenie did manage to please. The keyboards fit the song with a truly beautiful melodic atmosphere, while the growls and cleans leave nothing to be desired either.

To get an impression of this, I can recommend you listen to Funeral for a Dream.

Concept Insomnia – Kaleidoscope

The five-man strong horde that is Concept Insomnia hails from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and has been around for a couple of years now. Last year they released their debut, Perpetuum Mobile, and this year they followed up with Kaleidoscope, which can be downloaded off their Bandcamp page for diddley squat if you want. But rather, if you’re not too poor, at least supply them with enough to have a beer.

Before you do this, you can also stream the full album first, to get an impression. If you do this, you’ll probably find this record isn’t actually all that loud and that clean singing prevails. Especially compared to Avenie, this may be a tad too poppy for some, but in my holy opinion they supply a proper mix of crunch and melody.

For the lazy ones amongst you, we provide the release’s title song.

Finally, you can also hook up with the band on Facebook!

Mercenary – The Follower

As a good last and as announced, we’ll hand you a slice of Mercenary’s last effort. I reckon that with twenty years under their belts and six albums released, the Danes must have made a name for themselves and produced a sufficient supply of audio.

In 2009 the band changed its composition drastically, as three of its members left. Thankfully the vacancies could be filled again, avoiding a premature death of the band. With refreshed force the band started work on Metamorphosis, which saw the light early on in this year. It didn’t seem like much changed about the Mercenary sound, which in this case is definitely a good thing.

The songs are powerful like never before and René Pedersen, now solely focused on vocals, does his job wonderfully. His fairly high-pitched voice is a typical feature for the band, but I’m sure isn’t equally appealing to everyone. Hopefully The Follower will leave a good impression though.

For those interested, Mercenary has its own website here.

Tags: Danish, death, Finnish, German, melodeath, melodic, power

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