Hällas: Isle of Wisdom

Dear readers, I give you `Adventure Rock`, which is what Swedish band Hallas say their particular musical genre is...well it’s a new one on me anyway.

This is the bands third album, and is in essence a record that has its influences firmly taken from the 70`s with both Progressive and Hard Rock featuring prominently. A cursory glance at the song titles and you will see the band is well into their Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Take opener `Birth/Into Darkness, it’s very 70`s Prog even down to a rather cringe worthy spoken section towards the end of the song, and I`m not sold on the vocals either which sound rather forced.

`Advent of Dawn` fares slightly better, with at times an effective blend of Guitars and Keyboards, but it ultimately let down by a rather dry production, and that goes for the whole album really, and again I’m troubled by the vocals. `Earl`s Theme` is a more straightforward composition and shows promise, but then `The Inner Chamber` which sees the band taking it down a notch with a folk vibe going on sees the song just meandering on with no real direction to it, and the same can be said of `Elusion`s Gate` and `Gallivants(Of Space)`, it’s as if the band have plenty of ideas yet with no plan of how to structure them into something cohesive.

The final two tracks `Stygian Depth`s` and `The Wind Carries The Word` again hint at something that band could build upon, yet let down once again by the lack of any real focus, and by this time I found that the vocals were really starting to grate on me and were for large parts of the album the one thing that was really holding everything back.

The band are evidently full of ideas and they must be praised for trying to wedge them all in, but what the listener is left with is a rather incoherent record that does little to help itself.

`Adventure Rock`?...no thank you.

Track Listing
1. Birth/Into Darkness
2. Advent Of Dawn
3.Earl`s Theme
4.The Inner Chamber
5.Elusion`s Gate
6. Gallivants(Of Space)
7. Stygian Depths
8. The Wind Carries The Word

Added: June 19th 2022
Reviewer: Malcolm Smith
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 699
Language: english

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