VANDROYA — One (review)

Album · 2013 · Power Metal

5/5 · 2012-12-23
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One is the debut full-length album by Brazilian progressive power metal act Vandroya. Seeing its worldwide release in 2013 (Japan will get it a little earlier in December 2012), it’s been quite some time since the band’s only prior release, the two track demo Within Shadows (2005). Both the songs from the demo reappear on One. Vandroya’s vocalist Daisa Munhoz hasn’t been any stranger to the power metal scene in that time though, having been a regular contributor to the Brazilian metal opera project Soulspell, most recently on 2012’s Hollow's Gathering.

After the introductory track All Becomes One, the album will hit you with The Last Free Land, and Vandroya will set the standard for the release to follow. Mixing equal parts of power metal’s token speedy riffs, with progressive creativity, and topped off with Daisa’s amazing voice, it’s a standard that the band doesn’t seem to have any problem keeping up with, as they deliver track after track which keeps up with the high quality attention grabber that is The Last Free Land. There really isn’t a track here which lowers the standard in any way and the band’s blend of prog and power metal is actually one of the best fusions of the two styles I’ve yet heard. I often find that a lot of the so called progressive power metal bands end up being either just plain power metal with a few progressive tendencies, or progressive metal with a few speedier sections which end up getting it labelled prog-power, but Vandroya have produced a power metal album in One that truly is a completely progressive take on the genre, not just one that borrows bits of the other.

Despite use of keyboards, Vandroya’s music never properly falls into symphonic metal territory, although the intro uses a symphonic part outside of a metal context and there a few split seconds worth to be heard in a progressive context during When Heaven Decides To Call. The keyboards are used in the way one would expect in a more traditional progressive metal band such as Dream Theater, which allows the guitars to take a dominate role in the music which sets Vandroya apart from the hordes of keyboard driven power metal acts. There are plenty of great riffs on offer that thanks to the progressive nature of the music do a bit more than pummel your ears with speed.

So basically the album is musically pretty fantastic, and even slowing things down for the ballad Why Should We Say Goodbye? doesn’t do anything to harm the impact of the album, and it features some emotive lead guitar playing to boot, which fits in well with the nature of the song itself. If all you’re interested in is speed then it may feel like one of those obligatory ballads that power metal releases tend to have, but the song is the first one in many power metal albums I’ve heard and reviewed where the ballad hasn’t disrupted the album for me, or at least required time to grow, as was even the case with my 2012 album of the year, The Fire is Mine by US act Seven Kingdoms. That band is probably a good reference point for Vandroya actually, as both are female fronted power metal acts with dominate guitars, but Vandroya can be seen as a progressive take on what the other band does.

While it’s made pretty clear early on what the Vandroya sound is about, I’m impressed at how easy it is to tell the songs apart, especially for a debut full-length. You have that ballad I mentioned in Why Should We Say Goodbye?, the more power metal dominate tracks like The Last Free Land as well as tracks which take the music very close to a more traditional progressive metal sound such as the closing Solar Night, which is also the longest track on the album. There’s also a duet with Leandro Cacoilo (ex- Eterna, Seventh Seal) during Change the Tide which adds further flavour to the album.

As praiseworthy as Vandroya’s music is though Daisa’s vocals and the role they play in the band’s sound are most certainly not to be understated. She has a clear, melodic voice, which is powerful but not in the same operatic range that you hear a lot of female metal singers with, and also lacking the rougher edge that some of the female fronted heavy and power metal band’s have taken. This allows her vocal lines to come across as a lot more emotive, without lacking for the sort of directness of the performance that you’d expect from a metal singer. I’ve been singing the praises of female vocalists in metal for years now, and I like all the different directions I mentioned above, as well as those who use the growling style, but it’s singers of Daisa Munhoz’s calibre that I rate the most because they do everything those with a operatic voice do, without ending up the sort of acquired taste that like it or not, operatic vocals in metal are for many, while also sounding like they’re singing metal without resorting to the so called banshee vocals that bands like Huntress have used (to effect for their style, mind) in recent years, which can sound awesome but forced. Daisa on the other hand has a natural approach which works like a charm.

One is an early album highlight for 2013 and most definitely one that I’d readily recommend to all prog and power metal fans, as well as bands with a more classic metal sound. For me this was a perfect album to kick the new year off on a high and for their ability to produce one of those albums that delivers highlight after highlight without any loss in quality Vandroya deserve no less than a top tier rating for One. As strange as it may be to say it, the very first album I reviewed from 2013 may end up being my album of the year.

99/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org/vandroya-one-t2706.html))