Review Summary: Fallenmania, Part 5
All things considered, this album turned out pretty good for a band who wrote songs for Bionicle while trying to be the next Evanescence. Cryoshell’s only album is a collection of fairly solid songs, whose inspiration is obvious but they still show a lot of potential.
The first song, and their biggest hit, is of course, “Creeping in My Soul”, the one that was featured in Bionicle commercials, and that sounds almost note for note like “Bring Me To Life”. But it has some nice electronic sounds, a sort of dark atmosphere, and a rap verse that has very random lyrics but sounds convincingly like something Mike Shinoda could have recorded. Fortunately for us, Cryoshell have more to offer than their big hit. “Bye Bye Babylon” has a hard rocking riff and lots of energy. I’d even say I enjoy it more than “Creeping”.
The album has more ballad-like tracks, such as “The Room” with its softer vocals and somewhat strange lyrics about “a room that I can’t find”. It’s not the most interesting musically, but its lyrics create a strange atmosphere. However, “Feed” keeps the straightforward rock sound, with a heavier riff and a catchy chorus. The verses sound a lot like Evanescence, but the chorus is almost more pop, while also sounding like something Lacuna Coil or Within Temptation could have done. “Closer to the Truth” also sounds a lot like LC, with its mixture of piano and heavy guitars, and powerful chorus.
This band clearly belongs in the Fallenmania series, but I need to point out that Evanescence are not their only source of inspiration. There’s also a lot of Linkin Park, Lacuna Coil and Within Temptation influence, and a real knack for pop/rock hooks. Christine Lorentzen’s slightly nasal and raspy voice reminds me a of many pop/rock singers, like Bif Naked and bands like that, and a little of Cristina Scabbia. There’s also a rather fun track, “Come to My heaven”, when she’s singing at the top of her lungs over punchy riffs. This is one of the songs where she sounds completely unique, as a contrast with songs like “The Room” where she sings like a more whispery Amy Lee.
Unfortunately, that means the album often falls into rather generic pop/rock, or very generic goth-tinged alternative metal. It has some good songs, but also some forgettable ones. “Trigger” doesn’t have anything really interesting going on besides its soaring chorus. “Falling” also sounds too much like other songs that came before it, and like a particularly boring Lacuna Coil song. “Murky” has a title that suggest it would be darker and more mysterious, but it sounds too much like the other two one-word-title songs I already mentioned. Really, most of the ballads are not that good, except maybe “No More Words”, but that’s just because its darker piano sound makes it feel like a cut track from “Fallen”. It’s the last song, and it doesn’t make a particularly memorable ending to the album. In general, the last songs on the album are honestly not as interesting as the first ones. The album has only ten songs. It’s one of the shortest I’ve ever reviewed but it feels so much longer, and not in a good way.
All of this adds up to a band with huge potential, rather than a great band. Cryoshell’s music can get a little generic, very uneven in quality, but at their worst, they’re just dull rather than truly awful. At their best, they have an interesting sound that I like to go back to.
This series is meant to highlight, or at least remind you of many short-lived and obscure bands that tried to be the next Evanescence, and how they did that. Cryoshell is one of the bands that did it well, with a pretty fun rock album with Evanescence and Lacuna Coil influences. They were one of the good Fallenmaniacs, and I mean that as a compliment, because this band is definitely good at its genre. Its genre, which mixes rock, alternative metal and gothic metal without completely fitting into any of those subgenres, can only be labelled as Fallen’s genre, and it’s one of the good examples of it. We’ll never know if they could have been the greatest band in that genre, but we still have this album to enjoy.
