Eternitas [IMPORT]

Satyrian

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 17, 2006)
• Original Release Date: April 4, 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Lion Music Finland
• ASIN: B000ERU6TY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #96,495 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A promising new progressive metal band, September 20, 2007

By	Arthur Digbee (Indianapolis, IN, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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Satyrian is a promising new progressive metal band, the successor to Danse Macabre. It's based in the Netherlands but has members from Germany, Finland, and Serbia as well. Their compositions are straightforward rock, usually based on three chords with straightforward chord progressions. There's quite a bit of variation in melody in each song, which makes the band's sound fall into the progressive metal category.

But there's less complexity here than meets the ear, as the songs do not sound "composed" but instead built up from jam sessions. In other words, the band seems to start with one or two ideas for each piece and then take variations, solos, and other ideas from jam sessions and work them up as sub-sections of each piece. Each song sounds good by itself, but if you listen to the entire album it sounds as if it's running out of ideas or becoming repetitive.

Rather unusually, there are three voices in the band: two women, Judith Stüber and Kemi Vita, and one man, Roman Schönsee. Stüber is apparently the "lead" singer, while Vita is a "guest artist" mostly used for counter-melodies, harmony, and backing. Stüber's style usually involves a kind of musical "shout" at the end of many phrases, which works well for metal but I think it's overused on this album. Vita's voice is "cleaner" and makes a nice counterpoint to Stüber. I would have liked to hear more of her. Schönsee sings some clean vocals, some death grunts, but primarily a bass with death coloration. He isn't that all that talented a singer, so the clean vocals don't work that well when they are in the foreground. When he is singing in the background, especially with the death grunt coloration, Schönsee's vocals play their role well.

This album repays multiple listenings, despite its limitations, and the band is well worth keeping an eye on.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BEST Metal CD of 2006 (so far...), April 28, 2006

By	L Salisbury (Maryland United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Y'know, it amazing that albums this incredible are left in the underground and forced to remain obscure. SATYRIAN's debut took four years to record but was more than worth the wait! There is not one wasted track on "Eternitas"- a symphonic Goth metal masturpiece! The stand out songs include "my lagacy", "dark gift", "haunted lovers", the Kate Bush-esque "no tears no embrace" but, ironacally, the most memorible track was the least heavy: the Dio-esque "bridge of death" (which recalls Blackmore's Night and Saturnalia).
This CD is a must-have for fans of Tristania, Sins of Thy Beloved and Within Temptation- mainly because this is BETTER than anything those great bands have done lately! And I highly recomend buying this along with Sirenia's "Of Sixes & Sevens" (2002), then play 'em back-to-back! Satyrian's CD picks up right where Sirenia left off!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More indicative of a promising future than a current brilliance, May 22, 2008

By	Paul Lawrence "'EJL'" (Australia) - See all my reviews

Early signs weren't good. Power Play magazine loves this kind of stuff but gave the album a right panning. But what heck, you've gotta take a chance sometimes right? So I bought it and... Satyrian play a symphoneic power metal with the inevitable goth twinges and they are able to give their brew more variety by using four different vocalists - two male and two female, in addition to liberal use of programming.

The album was put together over time - some stuff was laid down as long ago as December 2002 despite the album only seeming to go out on full release in 2006. Yet it all sounds amazingly coherent and not thrown together at all and that's something the producers (from within the band) should be congratulated on.

As to the music it's par for the course with lots of atmospherics and nicely textured guitar parts that are kept on a tight leash. One of the male vocalists does the gruff growling thing which is thankfully used sparingly and the ladies have pleasant if unspectacular voice and there isn't an opera diva in sight!

All up however this is poor stuff for the genre. Some bands have an X-factor that even when their not on song they put forth product that's still appealing on certain levels. Satyrian aren't so blessed. Some of the atmospherics are foced, they don't edit their songs well so even some that work have passages that would of been better used as the basis for another song. The use of four vocalists causes an issue because there isn't a central focus. This wholt thing has been lovingly put together right down to the quality bookley and band linch pin Jan Yrlund is obviously a multi talented bloke but this just doesn't hit the spot anywhere near enough to find an audience in what is an overcrowded general as of it's time of release.

Satyrian remind me of Lunatica though not strictly speaking in a musical sense. Lunatice put out a couple of very middling albums then surprised everyone with the rather spot on 'The Edge of Infinity'. Satyrian has the elements in place - check out the title track and also Feel The Rush and some of the melodies in The Dark Gift and Sacred Lies. But on this album they haven't moulded those elements into shape enough.

A band whose future releases could be most interesting.