Band: Abigail Album: New Dawn Label: Absynthe Productions Rating: 4/10 Website: http://www.myspace.com /abigailmetal BUY NOW!

There has been an enormous influx of clean female vocals of late and, in my opinion, it needs to stop before it gets out of hand. I am not sexist in any way, but I feel strongly that clean female voices have no place in metal. Personally, I don’t like ultra clean male voices in metal either, bands like Bullet For My Valentine etc with their whiny, ear piercing screeching, but these vocals in women ruin the underlying music in it’s entirety for me. One up and coming band with a female lead vocalist is Abigail (the band name, not the name of the lead singer!), who have fairly recently released a four track EP entitled ‘New Dawn’. They basically play an extremely simple form of Made of Hate style melo-death/doom with a hint of straightforward Avenged Sevenfold riffery thrown in. What really gets me though, is that this band are so vocal driven, there is hardly a lead guitar! The guitar parts are seriously simple and if I’m perfectly honest not of a particularly high standard. I sincerely disliked the opening track because of, without going into detail, all of the points I mentioned above! The overpowering vocals would better suit an R&B track, and the over simplistic guitar parts would either suggest complete lack of musical talent, or lack of song writing ability. Luckily for the band, I suspect it is the latter. At least this gives them room to improve in the future. The second song starts better but this only lasts until the vocal entry, although at least this time around in some sections of the piece I can hear two guitar parts, which is saying something I suppose. It is a shame because the backing music is fairly heavy; regrettably however this is compromised by the actual amount of notes played...which, I suspect if counted, would be frightfully low. In the third song, we hear the inclusion of a much better, more violent male voice. There is however no change in the complexity…or need for it in the rest of the melody. A keyboard solo near the end of the tune gives light relief but...the damage is already done, damage furthered by the fourth and final track. A song that in truth reminds me more of Avril Lavine than anything else. Again we hear the more fierce male voice but still it isn’t enough to save this album. Overall...the only thing that cannot be flawed in this debut is the brilliant production. However, it will take a lot more than good sound quality to boost the performance of this group. Upsides...it was well organised, sound effects were used well and in it’s own unsophisticated way it is unique! There is no hiding the fact that this debut was extremely mediocre (putting it lightly) but I have belief in the individual aptitude of the members and if nothing else, this album has made me interested in finding out how much they can better it with their full debut. Lewis Klein Back to Reviews