Review: Coburg – 'The Enchantress'

COBURG
'The Enchantress'
EVOLVE OR DIE RECORDS

Symphonic rock/metal is a tag that fills me with dread usually, but Coburg's debut offering 'The Enchantress' is a pleasant surprise. Owing more to Lacuna Coil than the pseudo-operatic styles that unfortunately accompany the symphonic tag these days, Coburg sees soaring melodic feminine vocals underpinned by powerful rock full of classical flirtations.

Featuring members of Naked Lunch and Jet Noir, the band already has a solid pedigree but with the overt classical meets gothic influences injected with the occasional nasty industrial synth the band shatters any pre-conceived notions and quickly establishes itself as a new force.

Songs such as 'A Cold Day In Hell', 'The Hall Of Ghosts', 'Thy Dagger', 'Till The Bitter End' and 'Rise' take the classical elements and run with them blending great gothic rock and emotive vocals for a commercially viable but still high-brow core. Whereas tracks such as 'Echoes In The Night', 'Into The Darkness', and 'The Enchantress' give the album a harder more energetic slant with the guitars on overdrive and the electronics getting a little more industrial. It might sound like there's two styles vying for supremacy, but they compliment each other rather nicely and create a nice sense of variety on the album.

In terms of production the album is as strong as any big label rock release. The vocals are nice and high to drive the songs forward, the electronics are balanced with the guitars throughout and the classical sounds don't sound cheap or dated. Instead it's powerful, bombastic and modern.

This is a very strong first album from a band that has an awful lot going for it. It's heavy, melodic, delicate, hard and always interesting. The band have a good grasp on their sound which remains unique in what has become a somewhat derivative genre in recent years. It will be interesting to see how they progress their sound on future releases. 

Posted in: coburg,jet noir,music,naked lunch,the enchantress