ZANDELLE – Perseverance review

 ZANDELLE – Perseverance

Pure Steel Records

http://www.zandelle.net/

ZANDELLE is a band that doesn’t rush up to releasing an album every year. “Perseverance” is their new release and it comes six years after their previous studio album under the title “Flames of Rage”.  In their previous album the band showed to us that they wanted to become more modern and aggressive and in a few words to experiment with their sound. I don’t know if you liked or not that release, but the sure thing was that ZANDELLE offered something different to the audience. So, the question that lies here is where the new release of the band stands; does it continue from the point that their previous album left us or is it a return to the roots and the classic sound of the band?

THE COVER: ZANDELLE has got us used in epic themes in their lyrics and I think that their sound has a lot of epic elements. So, the cover on this album is something that fits the character of the band. It looks like a painting of the 18^th – 19^th century (I guess) and it shows 2 armies (medieval cavalry fighting). It is a beautiful cover which somehow reminded me of the cover of DOKKEN “Back for the Attack”.

MUSICAL STYLE: It is quite easy to describe the sound of ZANDELLE by adding them under the tag U.S. heavy/power metal. Yes my friends the band emphasizes on galloping riffs (in the way that IRON MAIDEN have done it with “Powerslave” and have created a whole school), on melodic lines on the leads and of course on some good solos. The band as I said balances between the traditional heavy metal compositions and the more epic metal oriented.

COMPOSITIONS: The new release of ZANDELLE comes with 11 new compositions and a duration that is a little more than 59 minutes. Also from the first tunes of this album you can understand that the band has left aside the modern sound experimentations they had showed in their previous release and in my opinion they did well. ZANDELLE in their new release return to the sound that have got us used to and made us love them. They play U.S. power metal with lots of galloping riffs, melodies and an epic metal attitude too. Their influences come from bands like IRON MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST, MANOWAR and sometimes they flirt with the European metal sound and especially HELLOWEEN. The band though doesn’t stand only there, but again they introduce some new elements in their sound by adding some neoclassical metal elements in their guitar solos and they use keyboards that give a slight symphonic and baroque touch to their compositions. There are also some progressive metal touches in the vein of QUEENSRYCHE and SAVATAGE. All these elements though don’t change the core of their sound, but enrich it and give to it even more variety.

CONCLUSION: I am happy to tell you that ZANDELLE are back in their sound and they are very good at it, but they have also managed to add to it some new elements that gave to their music even more depth and variety of expression. The songs included here might not be as catchy as some in their previous releases, but in due time and after careful listening they will pay you back. The fans of U.S. power metal have to check them out.

Nick “Verkaim” Parastatidis