I love a lot of music, I’ve been listening to music all my life. But the sounds that bring me to a higher consciousness are the sounds that soar, that tear at the fabric of the mundane, that reach to the heavens, that remind me that there is a level that screams for attainment.

The French seem to have a way with this music; they seem to capture the sound as well as the message. Maybe it’s the wine, maybe it’s the women, maybe it’s the focus on living. Whatever it is, they seem to have a direct connection, and this music takes it all in. The French do tend to go in multiple directions. Whyzdom, for instance, takes us to the eternal, and this seems to be a common direction with many of the French Gothic bands, but not necessarily here. This is music that grips you, gets you on your feet and does things that only certain kinds of music can do. It’s like certain drugs. . er’ from what I hear, that is. No matter how down you are, this brings you to your feet. I was cranking some serious code, number crunching, when I first turned the CD on. Well, the code thing lasted into about the first 30 seconds and then it was boooggy time. This is music that can raise the dead, music that can prove your mortality and make you damn glad you ain’t dead yet, as Monte Python so eloquently put it. That heavy foot stompin’ thing lasts for the first 4 or 5 songs, really gets you listening. Strong guitar riffs, a pounding drum line, and the dark, dusky vocals of French songstress Soraya Hostens. If you like to get up and cut a rug, this is your kind of music. And, after that, we get the Gothic.

The music starts with Hang on to Life. Metal done right, but probably not as dark as the following number I’m Your Only One. We get the pounding drums, we get the background symphonic, we get guitars that scream. If you want to dance in the darkness, if you want to flirt with the dead, this is the beat you want. We get the double kick drum, we get a vocal that brings forth the mystical, the symphonic is spiritual, the guitars bring the recently deceased to life. This is Gothic, this is metal in the 21st Century, done as only the French can do it. I’ve been to a lot of biker bars, being the biker I am, and this music would bring the house down in a Hells Angels bar. NO problem.

Ashes of Destiny brings us to a more ethereal direction. But, that more ethereal direction kicks you in the ass. Those guitars can provide pain, the kind of pain that brings you to the dance floor to get it moving. Our dark songstress takes us into directions that are reserved for the other side:

Cruel Love cranks it up a notch. Here the music howls, it introduces a lyrical direction that is, at the beginning, soft, but that builds into the hard direction that introduced the number. Soraya Hostens has a vocal that is meant to do this kind of music, it’s dark, it’s mysterious, it’s Gothic, and it sounds so right.

Perfidious Paradiese takes us to another direction. Here we get a bit of the electronic feel, just to show that we’re contemporary. We still hear the symphonic, we still get the metal, but it’s done in a more contemporary way, in a fashion that meets the requirements of the dance floor, but with a more Eastern European feel to the music. Again the production is top drawer, the engineers demonstrate their capabilities. We get the electronic sounds that are required, but we get the metal that brings us to our feet, we know that we’ve been driven to dance land. And we sure do like it. It’s booooogy in the 21st Century, dancing with stars, whoever they are.

Never Come Back Home takes us to a different direction in the CD. Here we get the pure metal, you can dance if you want, or you can visit the darker part of the message. The guitars are a little more serious, the vocals are more to the point, the drums are more crunching. And the lyrics take a more serious turn:

There’s not a lot of softness to this CD, however, there is some. It’s in Desecrated Past. Here we get the desperation of the dark side, we get the power of the metal to take us to that part of reality where we scream for understanding. This is a plaintive cry for redemption. And it’s done the way it needs to be done, with a vocal line that screams for recognition, for forgiveness, for a moment in eternity. The sound builds over screaming guitars, and takes us to metal nirvana, the keys howl as the softness recedes into screaming metal. But, we eventually return to the beautiful, to a remorseful direction that is not typical of the CD, but which provides a moment of beauty, that flows back to the pounding metal that is the signature sound of Syrens Call.

One Bloody Kiss is a dark sound. Again, the vocals are profound, the sound enhanced by a soulful direction with a moribund keyboard undercurrent. But the guitars begin to howl, the music builds and the vocals take us to a colder perspective:

Relapse is an instrumental selection, a dark instrumental. If you like your music dark, without the intrusion of the human vocal, this will do it for you. We give the guitar players some action. It takes a darker direction, one that flows into the next selection.

And that final selection, The Dance of Light, finishes the work in style. This is the epic of the work, we get it all, the metal, the message, the darkness, everything you needed to take you where you needed to go. There’s some inspired keys, some strong death metal vocals, and the message that talks to the undercurrent of life:

Syrens Call continues the strong direction that the French have made their own. You just can’t match this music many places, outstanding music, a message that illuminates our understanding, just outstanding Gothic. And you can’t get much better than that.

9.5 / 10

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