E.V.E.: Equations Vanquish Equality

The four track debut from E.V.E. finds a band wandering from genre to genre, not quite mastering or murdering any of them. The band's main songwriter is singer Vicky Psarakis, with the help of keyboard totting, guitar holding, bass bossing, saxophone soloing Elias Nousis. Who between them bring a mixture of dreamy floaty prog themes to a symphonic metal party held by an old power metal freak who can't quite get up to speed any more. Now that may not sound all that engaging, but at times Equations Vanquish Equality is rather transfixing, although it does happen in between some generic style posturing.

"Poetic Injustice" begins the journey with introspective strings and a synthetic, spoken voice bringing an almost Blade Runner feel to the music, completely drawing you in with its fragile beauty, before a gentle beat, melodic guitar line and steady beats takes you into latter day Karnataka. It's an impressive start, although one which is undone by the slow lounge jazz of "Perpetual Dreamers", where the mood is almost destroyed in a lift music kind of way. Psarakis has however a voice capable of saving even this song from its worst fate, but two songs in and we're looking at odds of 50-50.

Things continue to tip unevenly into the Nightwish-lite of "The Planet's Cry", where the riff cries out to be let loose, while all the while being kept on too tight a leash. Again the vocals soar and swoop, this time into almost operatic style, but the end results are so smooth and polite that the interest can wane quite severely by the time the all too expected piano stabs kick in. Final track "You Could" has a bash at combining much of what has gone before, with a big riff buried deep in the mix, allowing synth strings to float above it. As the songs reaches its crescendo, there is an uplifting atmosphere, helped by some tasteful drum work from George Kollias, although in truth this is another song that struggles between triumph and tragedy.

There's much to be impressed by on this short debut offering from E.V.E., but to hit home they'll need to know when to strike hard and when to take the foot off the gas. All too often Equations Vanquish Equality tries to do both at once.

Track Listing
1. Poetic Injustice
2. Perpetual Dreamers
3. The Planet's Cry
4. You Could

Added: November 2nd 2012
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: E.V.E. on Reverbnation
Hits: 2793
Language: english

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