SEVEN SPIRES

Emerald Seas

Frontiers Music
rating icon 9 / 10

Track listing:

01. Igne Defendit
02. Ghost of a Dream
03. No Words Exchanged
04. Every Crest
05. Unmapped Darkness
06. Succumb
07. Drowner of Worlds
08. Silvery Moon
09. Bury You
10. Fearless
11. With Love from the Other Side
12. The Trouble with Eternal Life
13. Emerald Seas


There is no mistaking precocious talent. When SEVEN SPIRES released their debut album "Solveig" in 2017, it may not have set the world alight, but it clearly heralded the arrival of a uniquely exuberant and inventive new force in the increasingly interchangeable worlds of power, symphonic and traditional metal. Fronted by the absurdly versatile and charismatic Adrienne Cowan and blessed with one of the most gifted young guitarists around, Jack Kosto, this gang of incurable metallic romantics conjured a debut full of great songs, but songs that resolutely refused to be nailed to one genre mast nor another.

Cowan's tendency to switch into screeching banshee mode aside, SEVEN SPIRES are a fervently melodic band with strong links to the power metal scene, but with often startling skill and grace, they filled "Solveig" with unexpected detours into more extreme territory, while also pumping everything with enough progressive and symphonic substance to keep several other potential audiences blissfully happy too. That was just the start, of course, and all that potential would go to waste if the follow-up failed to repeat the trick or, ideally, to outstrip it completely. Joyously, "Emerald Seas" achieves the latter goal with ease, trumping its predecessor on every level and adding countless extra layers of intrigue and depth to its creators' genre-melding sound. It's also vastly more theatrical than "Solveig", as SEVEN SPIRES indulge their dark, poetic fantasies across intricate, sprawling metal epics that frequently seem to owe as much to CRADLE OF FILTH as they do to KAMELOT.

It would take some self-control to avoid being bowled over by the sheer exuberance of opener "Ghost of a Dream". This is gloriously opulent melodic metal at heart, but there's a venom in the band's delivery and an audible twinkle in their singer's eye giving everything here a delicious frisson of malevolence. "No Words Exchanged" and "Every Crest" are instantly memorable anthems, with Cowan scaling the octaves like some magical diva, while "Unmapped Darkness" is a grittier, shadow-strewn slice of melodrama, with a chorus so thrillingly overwrought that it deserves a medal for services to keeping the Disney dream alive. First single "Succumb" is a buoyant miniature masterpiece: quite how Cowan hits some of those notes may be a matter for the local witchfinder, but SEVEN SPIRES are unerring in their inspired use of chord and key changes, never quite doing the obvious but delivering melodic payoff after payoff, often before diving off on another preposterous tangent, or into a blizzard of blastbeats, but always wrapping things up within three-to-five immaculate minutes

That they manage all this while still blistering away like the audacious virtuosos they clearly are — well, it's a little bit sickening, but it's also beyond exciting to hear a new band operating in this part of the metal world and doing something authentically new and utterly irresistible with such beloved ingredients. "Emerald Seas" never flags for a second: this is the eyeball-dislodging boot up the backside that power metal has needed for a while. Some of these songs (the pitch-black, gothic squall of "Drowner Of Worlds"; the almost indecently sumptuous "Fearless") will haunt your dreams. The rest will make you punch the air like a massive goof. "Emerald Seas" is, and I can't apologize enough for this, an absolute gem.

Author: Dom Lawson
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).