Review Summary: 40 minutes of how (not) to do power metal.
The sea of power metal is vast. Coming from one of the most popular and accessible genres in metal with heavy metal, it makes sense how there are just so many power metal bands and how many of them find some degree of success. However, for every one power metal band that found incredible amounts of success, there are many more power metal bands that seemed to never make it big, often going years and perhaps their entire lifespans in total obscurity. The subject of this review, Total Eclipse, just happens to be one of those bands. I can guarantee that for many of you, even those already well-acquainted with the genre, Total Eclipse is a totally unknown name. I certainly have never heard of them until I came across this album here. It also doesn't help that their name is also shared with so many other bands that finding information on them is more of a pain than it's worth. But hey, they seem to have a Wikipedia page for some reason, so there is that!
Total Eclipse formed back in 1996 in San Francisco, California, and have been active on and off since then, initially splitting up in 2003 before starting back up in 2007, where they have remained active with some lulls of inactivity here and there. They were started by brothers Erik and Chris Cameron, with vocalist and guitarist Andy Dracons Giardina being another notable member. Their 2003 split was caused by the Cameron brothers wanting to pursue a different musical direction, and not too long after, Giardina eventually gained the Total Eclipse name for himself. As far as I'm aware, the band in both periods of time never really had any success, remaining an obscure project that was left behind by many more established acts. So with that in mind, is
Kukulcan a hidden gem, a shining beacon for a band that never got their due when they should have?
The simple answer is: no. No it's not.
The opening track "Avenger" sets the stage for what is to come and...
boy, is it an introduction. Straight away, the mixing is downright awful. The guitar is mixed razor thin to a point that it is audibly painful, and the vocals aren't done any better, either. Not only are they mixed terribly, but they're pretty bad in general, as Giardina's vocals are out of tune more often than not. The drums, meanwhile, are barely there, and when you do manage to hear them, they are way too weak to leave any impact and frequently struggle to keep a rhythm. Overall, it all feels much too amateurish in presentation. Unfortunately, I have not listened to the band's previous albums before this one, so I can't really say how they fare in comparison to this one, but I feel like they couldn't have been nearly
this bad.
"Deluge of Fire" starts off with some promise, even if it's still not very good, but all that potential is squandered once Giardina opens his mouth again. I made a remark about how Giardina's vocals were mostly out of tune before, but for this track in particular, it is much more apparent. It is absolutely painful to hear him sing over equally painful guitar mixing, and considering how for this album Giardina is apparently doing every instrument except drums, that doesn't surprise me how both are equal in quality, or rather lacking in it. "Resolution #9" is much of the same, but for this song in particular, Giardina lets some harsh vocals into the fray, and surprise, surprise, they're also terrible. The one benefit this song has is that it's thankfully the shortest one so far, but at this point, I'm feeling baffled. Surely it can't get any worse than this, right?
And then "Rise of the Oppressor" comes in. Where do I even start with this one?
First off, there's a short drum intro to remind you that the drums for this album are still a thing, and I will say, it is nice to have a bit of a break from, well...
everything else. But of course, Giardina has to sing again, and this might actually be his worst performance of the album so far. It seems that for this song, Giardina decided to record his vocals off a drive-thru intercom speaker, making his already terrible singing even
worse. Thankfully, the guitars nearly aren't as painful as they usually are, and they actually let the drums have a bit of the spotlight sometimes, even if they're still not doing anything spectacular. However, by this point, I was resigning to the fact that this album was not going to get any better, and I feel I was right in that regard.
There are definitely parts of
Kukulcan where it feels like there is
some ounce of potential, as in the intros of the next song "Airlift/Blood-Drenched Souls of Babylon" and the aforementioned "Deluge of Fire", but it is never realized due to the awful mixing and Giardina's terrible singing. And unfortunately, the rest of the album doesn't improve much, which made listening to the rest of it an absolute endurance test to go through. I was never familiar of Total Eclipse before listening to this, and they did release two albums before this one, so maybe they aren't nearly as bad, but this album doesn't really make me eager to want to look into them anyway.
Make no mistake,
Kukulcan is not something I would recommend even the most diehard power metal fans to experience, it is only something I would suggest for the morbidly curious, or someone looking for an endurance test to see how long they last. Even then, Total Eclipse's third offering feels no different than your average amateur power metal band trying to make it big, and there isn't anything here you can't get from better bands in the genre. Perhaps there was a reason why Total Eclipse just seemed to never take off, even amongst the most dedicated power metal fans. Unfortunately,
Kukulcan feels like a convincing reason.
