New Day For the Dark - Gate XIII

Upon hearing Gate XIII for the first time, i thought "they sound like nightwish!" The female/male vocal combo, the heavier sections, and the prominent melody about things all made me think of night wish, who I've always regarded as my standard for high quality female fronted symphonic metal. I opened nightwish up in itunes and found that Gate XIII sounds nothing like nightwish. Gate XIII relies more heavily on synths/keyboards, and has more melody to the guitar. The bass is played with similar technical prowess and complexity to the lead guitar in a lot of the less technical and complex death metal bands out there. The guitar tone is almost too "sweet" reminding me of the song "sweet child of mine" by guns and roses. This guitar tone really loans itself to an excellent progressive sound, completed with a decent job on the drum machine by John. I really like the song "silence takes me away" which seems to have the most complicated riffs on the album, and there are a lot of them, or permutations of these riffs. This song by the way, sounds a lot like iron maiden to me, which is high praise. The only weakness is that the vocals seem to lack consistency and some clarity, like the vocalists were trying to sing as quietly as humanly possible while retaining the melody. Also, there were some moments where excessive emphasis was placed on a syllable, which, I believe, could be relieved by generally singing with more emphasis and volume. If it wasn't for some issues with the vocals, this would be a stronger EP. More importantly though, I feel that some more emphasis on fullness or heaviness could round this album out and bring it up to a 9/10. For now however, we are left with a solid, well executed EP that you should definitely look up.

 7.75/10

http://www.myspace.com/gatexiiimusic