This album has already been released back in February, but we only received a promotional copy recently. Entitled “Eyes Ablaze”, it is the surprising debut album of promising Finnish gothic rock/metal combo Random Eyes. Being double fronted, by which I mean the presence of a male and female vocalist, may not be very original, definitely not in this genre, but also in their case it works out quite well.
Christian Palin, the male half of the vocalist duo, and guitarist/songwriter Timo Kuusjärvi are at the base of the band. Having served in the Finnish army together back in 1999, they became friends thanks to mutual musical interests. It was only in 2002 however, that this friendship led to the foundation of Random Eyes. First member to join in on the project was female vocalist Katja Rimpeläinen, whom Palin saw performing on a live event earlier on. Impressed by her talented voice and much probably by the young lady’s looks as well, he asked her if she was interested to join, resulting in the aforementioned double vocal frontine. The obligatory bassist and drummer were recruited along with a second guitarist soon after and the band, now in full force, won gold at a Finnish talent contest in the Spring of 2002. Two more line-up changes – bassist Jukka Koponen being replaced by Timo Mäki-Marttunen and the addition of third (!) and lead guitarist Samuel Hoisko – didn’t withhold them from raging on straight into the studio, where they recorded this debut album together with producer Arttu Sarvanne.
The latter did a great job on giving this record the decent sound it deserved. The band’s songs, which fit somewhere in between gothic rock and power metal, come to their full right, opener “Hero”, the more powerful “Soldier” and semi-ballad “Little Angel” ahead of the pack. Although the band’s youthful enthusiasm sometimes leads to less qualitative pieces, especially in the vocal department, those moments are scarce and luckily never really ruin the emotion in their songs. “Eyes Ablaze” is recommended to fans of the Finnish school of gothic rock – Amorphis, Sentenced, Lullacry, For My Pain and many others – who aren’t scared off by a slight power metal flavour. I’d be surprised if this disc’s follow-up will still be independently released… (
SL)
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