Thursday, March 27, 2014

Anette OLZON: "Shine"

Rating: RRRR
Label: earMUSIC 2014
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Ethno Pop Rock (hardly Metal though?) with the symphonic touch?? File this under outside the box and different as the former Alyson Avenue and Nightwish singer goes the full circle and beyond with her first solo album. Regarding the Ethno part of the album, obviously not the entire time, however, tiny fragments, bits and pieces. For instance, a track like 'Floating', basically the 50/50 mix of Kate Bush and Enya influences and I do enjoy its 'magical-forest' flow and the atmospheric, dreamy sound.

"Lies", the sweet, innocence, Swedish melodies of Tone Norum, Iza, One More Time (cult act feat. the son of ABBA) only this kitten got claws. "Invincible", the odd Mike Oldfield during his 'Maggie' era and possibly the distant cousin to the Eurovision Song Contest winner of 2011, 'Running Scared'. The latter not too strange all considering. Olzon's main co-songwriter on the album (Stefan Örn) wrote the Euro winner after all. I do recall listening to the original Alyson Avenue demos [yours truly wrote and raved about them back in the days] thinking that Anette Olzon (Blyckert) takes a lot from pop, Eurovision (and dansband for that matter :)

"Falling", Nightwish-lite with plenty of string orchestration. "Moving Away", the territorial work of Blackmore's Night. To be perfectly honest. The two closing tracks, "One Million Faces" and "Watching From A Far", could just as easily have been straight off the latest albums by Agnetha Fältskog (ABBA). Both are extremely mellow ballads and if you came here looking for loud guitars and screaming metal? simply look elsewhere or preferably the other way. It's rather 'posh' than 'mosh' and the glossy and overall soft effort may not please the narrow-minded listener?
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