Thanks to Nightwish there seems to be an abundance of female-fronted Power Metal bands on the go these days. The Netherlands in particular has been a source for a large number of these bands, and Alantia follow suit, sourcing the earlier Nightwish period more than anything else. Although the vocal style usually sticks to the semi-opratic style that most of these type of bands tend to go for there are moments where former vocalist Yvette sounds similar to one Anneke van Giersbergen which tend to stand out more than the former style. Sadly it's not the strongest of performances, not bad, but a little weak at points as it sounds like the high notes are a bit out of her range. The first song Solitary Life kind of demonstrates what I mean. The songs itself is kind of safe sounding, not exactly something that draws you in as an album opener and is probably the weakest song of the demo.

To Your Demise steps things up a lot more, with some pretty awesome keyboard lines inbetween the verses, though the solo patch being used leaves a fair bit to be desired. There's a fantastic interlude about two and a half minutes that's somewhat letdown by the vocals push everything to the background. That cheesy keyboard lead patch resurfaces in the outro before a lead in to the next track that works alright barring the piano chord stabs that sound off in a bad way. Echoes of Perdition is pretty doomy, even with that keyboard tone poking through. It's surprisingly heavy sounding even with the gripes I have with the rest of the tracks, and it too is pretty good. Next up is a ballad, Pictures of My Past. One of the main things I noticed about it was that the bass pretty much lead the music which was actually kinda cool, and the guitar solo fit in pretty well in a sort of 80's power ballad way. I actually got images of Guns'n'Roses's November Rain for them, so kudos!

The Watcher is a folksy, mid paced affair and the Nightwish elements are pretty prominent with lots of flutes and the bellish tone that pops up in so many of their songs. It's good enough, but didn't jump straight out at me as such. Finally we come to Deceit, with an intro that got me all excited as it was screaming Sonata Arctica, but sadly went down another route as pianos hit instead of big strings, dampening my hopes a bit. It's still a good song nonetheless, very power metally in nature with a pretty awesome heavy bit at about 2:50 but suffers the same fate that the interlude in Into Your Demise does, with the vocals ruining the mood.

I think I've mentioned my main problems with the demo in the review, namely the vocals just not being good enough and the occasional dodgy keyboard sound. For a demo it didn't sound too bad either, but ther was a fair bit of muddiness with the drums and the vocals, making the former hard to separate out and the latter difficult to understand. The vocals were pretty loud in the mix, and even though they are the focal point of the band it'd have been nice if everything else wasn't in the background so much, but as mentioned it's a demo recording and I've heard a lot worse than this.

Overall I'm interested to hear how the new singer sounds as I didn't take too well to their last one. The music is solid, well executed and pretty engaging and I hope that Alantia have a vocalist that can do them justice. While a number of bands in this niche tend to be pretty damned sterile and boring they have a certain energy and can be pretty bombastic sounding as proven by some songs which is something I hope they can capitalise on and not be swallowed into the mire that a lot of bands in this style do.