Black Yet Full Of Stars is an Italian band that was started in 2012 by guitar player Carlo Dini, together with his fellow guitar player Marco Caiterzi. David Scott McBee entered the line-up in late 2015. The drums are partly performed by Periklis Roussis and Nicola Rinolfi. Their self-titled album sees parts of progressive metal, power metal, lots of bombastic symphonic elements, and even traces of trash can be found. Lightborn kicks off after an imbedded smooth intro part and what stands out is the pure power and balance that holds all mentioned elements together. Vocalist McBee is a typical power metal vocalist, sometimes referring to the German vocalists, Tobias Sammet of Avantasia or Hansi Kürsch of Blind Guardian fame, but the nice rough edge makes his voice pretty impressive and perfectly suits to BYFOS musical genre. Both Golden Child as well as the succeeding Face To Face are powerful bombastic tracks with well positioned orchestrations and two guitarists who are solid in their riffs as well as tasteful in their technical soloing. A Boy In Chains is different; a slower track with nice mood and speed changes, a song that shows ballad aspirations. As the album continues with Lords Of Silence and Every Great Man's Ghost the pace is picked up again and power metal parts take control. Also The Last Against The Wolves sees a lot of the power and tough riffs of the previous compositions. At this point A “different” track like A Boy In Chains would have suited to create some diversity. The songs start to sound a bit alike. Still great tunes, but a bit interchangeable. Nevertheless, those guitar solos are just amazing and are the reason the tracks remain at a certain level. The final track Tempesta does differ from the previous ones. Not only does the orchestration have a much more leading role on the track, but also the guitar parts are beautifully blended in. I absolutely like these orchestrated bits with massive riffs. Tempesta turns out to be my favourite track of the album. Black Yet Full Of Stars is a pretty decent album, the guitar parts are really good and the combination of orchestrated parts with those guitars works very well. Black Yet Full Of Stars has the privilege to host a strong vocalist, which isn't always the case in this genre. A little bit more variation in the songs would have been welcome, but nevertheless, a great powerful album. **** Pedro Bekkers (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
