Rapid Fire is a very young band out of Italy and Scream is their first full-length. Being from Italy one might expect Rapid Fire to play symphonic Power Metal, but in reality Rapid Fire do not use keyboards… but they do play Power Metal. Sometimes Scream is impressive and other times it just runs through the motions but it is a promising debut.

The style of Power Metal found on Scream is firmly rooted in the 80’s sound with plenty of riffs, leads, and melodic but not cheesy choruses. We’ve heard this before and we’ve heard it better. The one thing that the band does slightly different though is they don’t rely on double bass to carry their songs. There are only about two songs which can be considered double bass monsters, both of those being Speed Metal, in particular Fast Like Fire (which has a strong Walls Of Jericho feel to it). The rest of the songs have a lot of fast moments but occasionally seem more mid-paced and relaxed. There are some galloping rhythms and spurts of rhythm heavy double bass in place of constant double bass on most tracks which is a nice change of pace. Moreover, almost every chorus had a really strong sense of melody without gratuitous gang vocals or overtly melodic underlying instrumentation, which is a feat in itself. There are solid riffs and some well-thought out leads in the mid-paced parts of this CD but it just wasn’t as exciting when the band played fast.

Vocally the band is strong, but perhaps due to the production or perhaps due to the singers limitations his voice doesn’t seem forceful or strong enough to carry what should be aggressive parts in the music. His voice has a nice melodic tone to it and it sounds great in the choruses, but is lacking somewhat during some verses, which emphasizes the relaxed feeling of the mid-paced sections more than it should. I do like the 80’s approach to the singing though, that is with very little vibrato. The simplistic nature of the vocal style fits well with the bare-bones, simplistic and to the point nature of the music. With that being said, the ability for the singer to use a slightly gruffer voice at times would do a lot for the band.

Rapid Fire is to be commended for varying their delivery throughout the CD without relying too much on one style of song writing, but sometimes I wish they’d just speed things up and thrash out, because they are very capable of doing so. Instead, we’re left with extended spurts of speed, interwoven with mid-paced, Iron Maiden styled riffing full of triplets and above average leads. There are some highly memorable songs including Wild Obsession, the aforementioned Fast Like Fire (this song completely destroys, blows away everything else on the CD), and the especially heavy Coming Hope. Rapid Fire have a good sense of melody and many riffs and choruses remain stuck in my head after repeated listens; truth be told there are some decivesly awesome riffs on this CD. The band has tried to spice things up by varying their tempos and most of the time they are successful by taking established conventions and making them listenable and enjoyable, but perhaps due to the bands young age or lack of experience, some songs just don’t flow or hold interest like they should from beginning to end. This causes the occasional song to become forgettable, despite a strong lead, chorus, or solid main riff, which should not happen.

Rapid Fire needs to be careful. They’re playing a style a lot of bands have played in the past, and many are starting to revive again, and it’ll be very easy for Scream to fly completely under the radar. They show a lot of promise but I could easily see forthcoming CDs becoming derivative of this release. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen, but Rapid Fire will need to tighten up the song writing and perhaps give a more challenging or neck breaking listening experience in future releases. My opinion: here’s hoping for more songs in the vein of the speed metal glory of Fast Like Fire.