Band: Raintime
Title: Psychromatic
Label: Lifeforce Records
Distribution: Suburban – Bertus
Release date: 26/04/2010
Review: CD

Raintime are an Italian Modern Metal act that recently recorded its third full length, after Tales From Sadness (Arise Records, 2005) and Flies & Lies (their 2007-Lifeforce-debut). The album has been recorded at Remaster Studios with Nick Savio (Powerquest, Cyber Cross, Arthemis), and mixed / mastered by former Machine Head- & Forbidden-member Logan Mader (Devildriver, Demia, Psycroptic, Cavalera Conspiracy, Soulfly etc) at the Undercity Studio.
Throughout the years, the band evolved in its musical approach. In the early years, Raintime brought a pretty heavy form of Power-alike Metal with elements from Death Metal, yet in meantime this has evolved into a very Swedish-oriented form of melodic and technical Thrash / Power / Melo-Metal. It isn’t the first Italian band that sounds very Swedish at all, yet they do also include elements from non-Swedish genres.
As a matter of fact, Raintime do sound as some mixture of, for example, later In Flames, Edenshade, Children Of Bodom and Evergrey. The album is more progressive and less brutal than certain Swedish-oriented colleagues from Italy, like Node or Disarmonia Mundi, and there is more variation (in tempo, atmosphere and progression); but still the whole sounds rather ‘evident’, somewhat ‘yeah, another one…’… however, the catchiness and the variation will be adored by every single fan of so-called Emo-Death (or is it Melo-Death Metalcore).

70/100

Ivan Tibos.