Sometimes I listen to music and I just can’t get into it, even though every separate element on its own is to my liking, the final result just slightly misses my personal taste. Today’s review is about such a case: Essence is a progressive metalcore band from Belgium, and the guys are about to release their new EP Smoke And Mirrors on February 2nd!
As I said above, the quintet has all the ingredients to make me love the five songs: technically-sound guitar playing, solid drumming, enjoyable vocals, all wrapped in a matching massive production. But, in my opinion, it lacks one key thing: diverse songwriting with real highlights; which is a shame since the musicians seem to master their instruments quite well.
The other fact that kind of irks me, is the almost omnipresent “chugging”, which makes up almost half the time of these twenty-five minutes. Luckily, the progressive parts make up for that though, since they’re interesting enough to forget the rest. For me personally, an eighty to twenty ratio would have been the ideal mixture between melodic and heavy, but I guess that’s a subjective criteria.
The vocalist delivers a strong performance from start to finish, while solely relying on his powerful screams; sadly this is yet another tidbit where I would have liked some diversity. The usage of one singing style simply makes it hard to distinguish the choruses from the verses, which, to a melody-lover like myself, makes it hard to get into the songs.
I realize that this comes across as a negative review, but I’m actually really glad that I found out about Essence, because I’m convinced that, with a bit of tweaking, their approach to music has a lot of potential. Which is why, in closing, I can definitely recommend giving their EP a try, maybe you’ll enjoy it from the get-go. I, on the other hand, will follow their progress in the future and hope to get a chance to catch them live some time soon! Head over to their Facebook page for more information and watch their video below!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-VL-MsdAvg]