In 2003, our worlds were rocked by the amazing duet between Amy-Lee’s amazing vocal talent and Ben
 Moody’s fantatic guitar work. Songs like Bring me To Life and My Immortal were suddenly on every advertising campaign, in every movie sound track, and playing every 5 minutes on the radio. They were all set to be the next big thing for the Tamagothie crowd…

… and then it all went to shit about 6 months later when Moody quit the band, and their next album sounded exactly the same as the first one because Terry Balsamo is one of the elast creative musicians to ever get on the radio (except for maybe the guys in Jet).

 
So here we had this beautiful sound, which a lot of other bands have attempted to emulate and failed at miserably, until late in 2008. Memoira, a small epic metal band from Finland.

I found out about these guys entirely by accident. I was attempting to download some Lacuna Coil, and must have clicked something wrong. Clearly I wasn’t paying attention, because when the little ‘ding’ sound that tells me my download was completed, I just dragged it into Winamp and hit play… And was thinking two tracks in that “the Coil’s gone for a REALLY different sound this album”.

Actually bothering to look into my playlist I noticed that my most recent edition was not Lacuna Coil. It was in fact a band I’ve never heard of: “Memoira“. So I restarted the album, and decided to sit through the whole thing.

And I was impressed.

Now, honestly, I’m a fan of epic metal to begin with, so this review may be a bit biased. But fuck it, if I hated the music, I wouldn’t have sat there and listened to it, right?

Jemina, who performs for the vocals for Memoira, is every bit the singer Amy-Lee ever was. In fact, if you made Amy-Lee a lot fatter, they’d look kinda similar. Unlike Amy-Lee, Jemina is able to hit low notes as well. She clearly is a classically trained singer. 

Jani Haanpaa and Marko Heurlin, the guitarists, are actually the creative force behind the band. Their strong guitar work, and brilliantly forceful harmonies combine with the talents of the other musicians they’ve brought in to create music that is every bit as emotionally evocative as any of the other great epic metal bands you could care to name.

The album works well as an entire piece, with each track leading to the next rather seemlessly. It’s the sort of thing you can actually put on, lean back with a nice drink, and just listen to with your eyes close for the ~45 minutes it lasts. Not exactly a concept album, but certainly more than just a collection of the songs that were worth recording.

The image that they’re projecting, sadly, is very samey-same. They look like every other modern goth band. Actually, lookswise, the band is basically Fattenesence. The music’s great, but they’re all chubby goth nerds. In a way it’s actually inspiring, because I’m a chubby goth nerd too.

The album has been released through Nightmare Records, which sadly means that it’s not really going to be found in many places outside of specialty retailers. A true pity, as the band is well worth supporting in this early stage of their professional career. On the bright side, It’s not like Nightmare Records have a habit of whoring out the bands to merchandise. You know a band is kind of shit when the lunchbox and action figures come out before their 3rd album.

You can buy the self titled album from Amazon: CD or Mp3 Download.

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