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Rating: One would need an extraordinary amount of courage to assert that their first work was a mix of gothic/symphonic metal. And yet, it has been 3 years since the Spanish band Forever Slave released "Alice's Inferno", which went almost completely unnoticed and left few regrets nor much satisfaction, especially in a live context.
We are in 2008, and in a time when metal album releases are effectively a daily occurrence, the Iberians have decided to release a new album with the primary objectives of completely changing course and doing so from the very beginning, aiming to produce songs with notable compositional improvements and leaving along a substantially dwindled path their unfortunate past. However, as we can observe after listening to the first three songs, a change has occurred, both in terms of quality and in regards to the global sound of melody and voice; but still, and I think the band itself, upon close introspection, may have realized, there is still much work to be done. Even to the ears of someone not extremely experienced and who started listening to gothic and its derivatives at least a month ago, the overall sound of Forever Slave would still seem very fragile, not very promising, and somewhat superficial, monotonous, and not very productive.
Surely innovative are the themes they have chosen to explore in a notable, careful, and well-informed manner in their respective lyrics, such as AIDS/HIV, abuse against women, artificial insemination, homosexual relationships, the defense against pedophilia, and much more; but taking those away, everything sinks into the commercial and unproductive, despite their many declared years of experience that should have served to finally crown, through their sound, their greatest dream since they formed: to reach, albeit distantly, the fame enjoyed by the sacred monsters of this genre. (see Tiamat, Therion, TON & co). Further ruining the final quality of this album are the useless tracks like "Pulse", which, excuse the somewhat vague expression, is just there to make up numbers and in its 24 seconds fails to produce even the minimum amount of atmosphere that would have been necessary, obligatory, and an intro to one of the most significant and best-executed tracks of the entire work: "Kristin AIDS". Along with that, "Dickhead!" will very likely be remembered by many of their fans as a semi-masterpiece even though, despite being extremely catchy and "power", it already sounds familiar.
The only positive factor I've been able to appreciate, which had no objections against it, is the fact that slightly raising the fortunes of this semi-disaster, albeit in minor parts, falls to the splendid and clear voice of the band's leader, "Lady Angellyca", which did not disappoint even in their previous work "Alice's Inferno". Many attribute the blame to the genre itself, which is currently suffering from too much creative stagnation, but at the same time, I wonder what the appropriate solutions are that all those bands apply to always be able to offer bright, fresh, and interesting works from all points of view. Everything now depends on them.
...hoping they try to take that step forward that would be needed to enter into legend...[cit.]
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