Time Signature Spark of life...

Genre: symphonic metal

Generally, symphonic metal does not go well together with me. I tend to find it over the top and cheesy, but every now and then, I come across a symphonic metal album that just clicks with me.

Thy Symphony's "A New Beginning" is not one of those albums. It is simply over the top, and an overkill of impressions. The metal aspect and the symphonic aspect are not really well balanced. The production of the metal instrumentation in particular is surprisingly bad, and the rough-edged guitars do not go well with the symphonic elements. I have a lot of beef with the vocals - both Karina Bonizi's operatic style and Leandro Baracho's rock-styled vocals, both of which sound like the two singers simply try too hard.

The album definitely has its good moments. Firstly, I like the intensity of many of the sympbonic elements, and - let's face it - symphonic music enables much more complex layers and textures than the typical rock instrumentation does. And Thy Symphony definitely succeed in creating multi-layered epic music... to the point that I think it would be a much better album if it was a purely symphonic one with all rock/metal elements, and the vocals, stripped away. That being said, there are a couple of tracks, I think, where it all comes neatly together, such as 'Revolution' which draws on extreme metal, and the more doomy 'Endless Moment'.

Not my cup of tea, "A New Beginning" may still appeal to fans of symphonic metal, seeing that it has all the elements that popular symphonic metal releases have.