“We play epic complex music and we take ourselves far too seriously.”
Not a bad way for any band to state their raison d’être. But, whether true or not, there’s little doubt Israeli band Scardust play powerful, symphonic metal, similar to bands like Nightwish and Epica.
Souls is the band’s third album and, as per their previous releases, it contains many of the elements associated with the band, epic symphonic passages, more than an occasional touch of overkill, anthemic choir choruses and hard-driving riffs. There’s even a Turkish orchestra on a couple of tracks. I think Bombast is the word! They also inject a degree of overt complexity in their music and, while there’s no doubting the quality of the musicianship, what they perform often hovers somewhat uneasily between being far too complex for its own sake, and occasionally being catchy, sometimes within the same piece, such as on tracks like ‘Long Forgotten Song,’ which is a mixture of styles, with complex arrangements, some metal, a touch of Yes and symphonic backing. Unreachable, featuring the LTV choir, and RIP are also in a similar vein, a series of constant stop-starts and more overlays of being too intense than is needed. Maybe they really do take themselves too seriously.
But amongst the high points of this album are the vocals of Noa Gruman. Similar to Tarja, she’s operatically trained, meaning she can deliver the lyrics to some quite complex pieces without sacrificing the power in her voice. She is an amazing vocalist. The other highlight is the three-part ‘Touch Of Life,’ which sees Haken’s Ross Jennings showing his versatility by singing with Noa on two of the pieces. ‘In Your Eyes,’ the first piece, is by Scardust standards, almost a straight-ahead rock song, with ‘Dance Of Creation’ featuring Noa performing some very impressive vocal gymnastics, before ‘King Of Insanity’ becomes Dream Theatre meets Symphonic rock, with guitarist Yadin Moyal getting in touch with his inner John Petrucci.
Listening to Souls made me wonder how Scardust are going to be able to reproduce some of this music onstage. It’s all occasionally too close to going over the top, and I just wonder whether a little more simplicity in what they perform might broaden their appeal somewhat, because I suspect this album will only have a very narrow target audience.
