Style: Heavy Metal, Prog Metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Iron Maiden, Queensryche
Review by: Sabrina
Country: Germany
Release date: 3 July, 2022
Looking through Metal Archives for underground metal albums is a fun pastime in its own right. Sometimes you find rare gems buried amongst the rubble, other times the decomposing remains of last decade’s trash. Taking shelter in the valley of these two extremes is the new self-titled debut album, Into Denial, which I stumbled upon during said pastime. I picked this album up to review after a few initial impressions: they have a cool album cover, classic heavy metal elements with progressive leanings, a simple approach to compositional writing, clean mix and production, and solid, melodic riffs. Unfortunately, this album is burdened with two unredeemable flaws: firstly, making music in this style of heavy metal in 2022 is like beating a prehistoric horse fossil, secondly, the vocalist for Into Denialreally sucks at lyrical writing and is also not the best singer.
Once I had organized my thoughts about the strengths and flaws of Into Denial, I learned unanticipated about this band… well, that they are not even a band at all! This album is completely the work of some German guy named Sotirios Rammos. I cannot find any information about him other than the fact that he might have made a Final Fantasy XIV guitar cover six years ago. This means that this poor soul took on the responsibility that five people should have, and while I still applaud him for attempting to do it all, I cannot overlook the album’s glaring weaknesses.
Into Denial owes a great deal to Iron Maiden and other classic heavy metal bands that lean on progressive compositions, melodic guitar leads, and occasional power metal vocal tendencies, as they are this project’s greatest influences. The first four tracks on the album are structured like your typical metal tracks, but starting at track five, “Illusion of Truth”, we get more experimentation that follows through to the end of the album with more modern riffing and drum techniques, a ballad, a ten-minute track, an instrumental track, and tracks with organ synths. Vocal hymns and epic power metal choruses are sprinkled in tracks like “The Astral Key”, “Dance of Zalongo”, and “Illusion of Truth,” which serve to spice up the album more.
While these upsides are fine and dandy, I must now shine light on the aspect that probably should have remained in darkness: the lyrics. I have no qualms with the social/political themes on this album; in fact, I’m pretty much in agreement with all of its stances. But Rammos’ lyrical delivery is so blunt, so on-the-nose, it’s a bit cringy (See “Unity” for example). Some bands illustrate their themes with complex metaphors and colorful imagery; in contrast, the majority of the lyrics in Into Denial feel like the writer took 10 minutes to brainstorm everything he hated about society, typed his complaints up in a word document, ran it through autocorrect, then slapped them into his vocal melodies without second thought. It doesn’t matter how many syllables one of his sentences have, the writer manages to fit basically anything into a chorus, whether or not it flows or is consistent with previous verses; It’s like bad improv singing.
The vocals don’t aid the poor lyrics either as they are sung at a fairly tepid, mid-range level with some layerings in the album’s choruses. From the limited vocal range presented front-and-center in this album, it seems as though that Rammos is not the most experienced vocalist given. Additionally, this flaw stands out a whole lot more because of the vocals’ prominent placement in the mix, giving them a spotlight amongst the sharp, but minimal and transparent, instrumental section. The sound of the overall album is helped a lot by the quality production job which gives room for a skeptical listener to empathize more with what the artist was aiming to achieve. Depending on your mood, you will either think the vocal performance is flawed in an endearing or annoying way–I’ve certainly gone through both.
And drawing a conclusion from all the information given thus far, Into Denial fits nicely into the cliché of a true, archetypal one-man band; a guitar “virtuoso” who would be far better off in a band with people who specialize in vocals and drumming. In consequence, the best song on the album is the instrumental track, “Approaching Collapse”, having all the benefits of solid instrumental techniques without the amateurish vocals. Additionally, the few tracks with the highest incorporation of progressive elements in the keyboards and melodic riffs (“Ashes and Regret”), technical drumming (“Illusion of Truth”), and of course, extended song structures (“Fragments”) are the songs that also stood out.
I don’t hate this album, but despite being a good riff writer and a decent composer, Rammos’ shoddy lyrics and vocals result in an end product that sounds a bit awkward and absurd. I love to see Rammos’ enthusiasm, but doing lackluster work in multiple jobs he’s not proficient at, sells his abilities short of one job he could have excelled in.
Recommended tracks: Approaching Collapse, Ashes and Regret, Fragments, Dance of Zalongo, Illusion of Truth
You may also like: Pentral, Mamorlis, Tanagra
Final verdict: 4.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Into Denial is:
– Sotirios Rammos (vocals, guitars, bass, drums)
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