Review Summary: A nice little EP of covers to keep fans on their toes.
Supergroups can be hit or miss. Sometimes the heaviest hitters in certain bands come together and you'd think it would always yield amazing results, but that's not always the case. However, The Halo Effect, a band consisting of members/former members of some of Sweden's best melodic death metal bands (most notably Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquillity), has put out two fantastic, albeit unoriginal, albums so far.
March of the Unheard was released earlier this year, and while metalheads have heard the same tune before, it was an extremely solid piece of melodic death metal. Now only months later, they've released an EP consisting of five cover tracks titled
We Are Shadows. So how does it stack up with the rest of their original material?
To be fair, its kind of hard to judge a band based on an EP full of covers, and to be honest, I've never heard any of the original songs to begin with. However, I can judge it based on performance and pure energy, both of which The Halo Effect succeeds in conveying with these covers. The first track, ‘I Wanna Be Somebody’, originally performed by W.A.S.P., is an energetic opener that perfectly blends the clean, hair metal riffage with a throat-shredding vocal performance while also throwing in some traditional melodeath tremolo-picked guitars. After that is ‘Dance With the Devil’, a track made by UK rock band Phenomena, is an atmospheric synth metal banger, equipped with violins, chanting female vocals and an epic orchestral sound. This track alone proves that The Halo Effect can veer from pure melodic death metal and still yield fantastic results.
‘If You Were Here’, a Kent cover, is almost gothic rock in nature and sounds a lot like Dark Tranquillity's middle-era stuff, showing Mikael's gloomy crooning mixed with some melancholic female vocals to form a nice duet. The riffs are soft and sensual, just as gothic music should be and it features a nice duel-harmony guitar solo a little more than halfway through. It could honestly be mistaken for a Moonspell track if you didn't know any better. ‘Shoreline’ is the “ballad” of the EP, with soaring melodic riffs and more clean vocals that sound romantic in nature. Finally,
We Are Shadows is ended with a cover of Danzig's ‘How the Gods Kill’ and this track starts off dark and brooding (as Danzig tracks sometimes do) before exploding into a massive riff-fest.
The Halo Effect is more than just an average supergroup, they're one of the best melodic death metal bands currently in the game.
We Are Shadows is a reminder to every listener that these heavyweights don't just produce monotonous melodeath over and over, it shows the range with which they operate. From hair metal to gothic influences all the way to pure heavy metal riffage, these guys really can do it all. I would prefer an EP of original material, but with the release of
March of the Unheard earlier this year, there's plenty of material to hold fans over until the next LP.
