| CD REVIEW Soul Stealer |
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Band : Soul Stealer If you're occasionaly looking to enrich your Traditional Heavy Metal collection with a somewhat exotic touch, I'm happy to announce that since shortly Lithouania has joined the likes of South American, Asian, and Latin European bands thanks to more open politics towards the Western world. Originally known as Soul Brothers and founded in 2003, Vilnius based Soul Stealer (who changed their name after signing with Lithouania based label Ledo Takas) brings a nice melodic and keyboard driven Heavy Metal with clear type singing which indeed has some exotic flavour. The Lithouanian language is far more attractive than that of the inner-mouth gutterings of Russian, which used to be officially mandatory in all former Sovjet states. The label goes as far as to claim that the Lithouanian is said to be second only to Italian when it comes to application in songs, but personally I've never heard of that so we'll just take it as some kind of national pride thing. More interesting to know is the fact that the line-up contains a couple of scene veterans in keyboardist Vytautas Diskevicius (and for the Lithouanian among you readers, you'll have to excuse me for not being able to write the names with the necessary acents and all, but our pcs and lap-tops simply don't have the posibility to write according to your language)...who's played in Ruination and Shadowdances...and guitarist Enrikas Slavinskis has also been playing with Obtest (Vilnius based Folk Black Metal act with several releases on Ledo Takas, have recently release their latest outing Gyubes Medis)for the last couple of years. These first two are the main song writers, and in the arrangements of their compositions they leave ample room to each other for each to shine. But the rhythm section of bassist Kestutis Zige and drummer Sarumas Venckus are certainly not to be underrated, and the band gained some extra focus when their (relatively young, going from the pictures) singer Jeronimas Milius won the pre-selections to represent his country at the Eurosongfestival in late May 2008 with the ballad "Nomads In The Night". And possibly it's this fact that eventualy enticed Ledo Takas (who'm I though were rather into more extreme kinds of Metal) into signing the band for their debut full-length (which was already recorded in 2006, but only got mastered for CD in early 2008). Of course, with that event still to happen when the album was actually released, the bio still boasts about Milius in the following words: "...His voice abilities must be heard and are still hard to believe and must be discovered by every admirer of strong Heavy Metal personalities..."...and frankly, I feel he did a very nice job at the event (I went and checked out his performance, see – wónderful thing, this Internet we're on!), even if the lyrics were done in English in stead of in Milius' native language. Maybe the jury and public agreed with me that the song is a bit too polished and predictable, because it was voted out in the semi-finals (getting a place at #11 from the bottom up on 38 entries). Perhaps the choice of language was the "fatal" mistake made there... ...because on this album 3 out of the 10 songs also have English lyrics, and somehow those come over a bit simple and...dare I say encumbrant to the exotic feel on the rest of the album? I do! Yes, in a way those English songs tear the overall high standard of the other songs down, and that's a pity. Not that Milius' pronounciation of the English lyrics suffers from any accent, you know, it's just that they come over a bit thin! Well, since we don't exactly speak Lithouanian, things may actually be the same for the other songs, but to us who don't speak the language, the exotic attraction remains. Perhaps you feel the need to make up your own mind, and right you would bé! I mean, don't take my words for granted, and go check out the songs at myspace.com/soulstealerband, where the band posted 2 songs in their own language and 2 in English ("Vampire Woman" is actually the best, a semi-ballad with more exited opening and second part – actually, it's a pity they didn't post "Liudessio Miestas", the Lithouanian ballad). 87/100 Tony. |