Materdea-A Rose for Egeria

Female fronted folk metal band with both keyboards and a violin. Well then,. we're already off to a great start! The songs on A Rose for Egeria are often epic and very beautiful. The bands vocalist has a beautiful and rather thin voice and the interplay between the caressing female lines and some of the groovier guitar riffs is very well done. It's not overplayed, so when it does get used it adds flavor rather than coming off as a dull and overused gimmick. A Rose of Egeria is eleven tracks of well written and properly thought out symphonic folk metal, the kind of thing that restores my faith in the genre.

Part of the appeal of Materdea for me is the way that they manage to craft some really excellent melodic lines, seemingly out of thin air. For example, their is no real precedent for the introductory keyboard line in An Unexpected Guest but it is immediately recognizable and extremely memorable. There are also some very weird and strangely fascinating moments. Perhaps the most bizarre is Land Of Wonder which features the voice of a fairy, strange, but well developed. Materdea bill themselves as Elvish Metal and given the rather otherworldly magical feel of these songs, I can't think of a better label.

So Materdea have managed to rise up, masters of a genre that has often been called overcrowded. Their unique niche is one that many bands have tried to work their ways into, but none have succeeded. These Italians are only going up, they are one of the most exciting pagan metal acts on the scene. With over 5,700 facebook likes already they are clearly pretty huge on their local circuit. As their songwriting gets even better (How they could do that I'm not sure) I am sure they could very easily become a massive internationally touring name.

Find them on Facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/MaterDea