Raintime is an Italian band not easy to categorize. From the first seconds of the first song you'd swear you're gonna have a Gothenburg style melodeath album, but Raintime is more of a Heavy Power Prog band with a mix of clean and melodeath vocal, providing an incredible melodic and bombastic mix that cannot easily be categorized in my opinion.

One thing is sure, this band knows how to play ! Their music is tantalizing and won't let any listener indifferent, that's for sure. The production is HUGE, the sound is crystal clear and the mix is perfect. Each song is like a blow in your face, exploding in your mind and stimulating the neurons delivering you earring pleasure hours and hours during. The vocals are awesome, both the clean and aggressive one are right on the money and while I slightly prefer the cleaner ones, I must say the album is well balanced that way. The songs are all delightfully melodic and aggressive at the same time, using the right portion of riffs, melodic guitars, keys and progressive elements. Composition is the key and the songs are always in motion, evolving in a way that is just perfect, progressive but not too much. The choruses in the songs are ultra melodic and catchy and sometimes reminiscent of nu-metal. I'm not a big fan of nu-metal as you may know but I find Raintime absolutely exquisite, and they definitely don't take their roots in this category but mostly in prog metal with a melodeath attitude. The songs, melodies and composition are fresh and when you listen to Raintime you know you're listening to something different, and well, at the risk to repeat myself : fresh ! The album tempo is always changing all over the album, with mostly fast paced songs (thanks for that !). The album contains only great tunes (no filler or weak track), from the out-of-this-world opener and album titled track Flies & Lies to the last bombastic track of the album : Matrioska (what a way to end an album, such powerfully epic finish !), passing by the unmissable and huge Michael Jackson cover of Beat It (its like this song was MEANT to sound this way !), the album is a pure metal pleasure roller coaster ride. The 9th track Another Transition features Manticora's singer Lars Larsen, and what a bombastic song that is ! Like I said before, no fillers here. Usually its easy to spot an Italian band from the medium production or the vocal accent, but here both these points are totally absent, the production is picture perfect and the vocals have no accent and are simply majestic.

In the end its difficult to describe this band with words, as their music is so enchanting, lifting and powerful at the same time. If you're a fan of prog metal and like melodic and majestic music in general and don't mind the few melodeath vocal parts, then I urge you to listen to Raintime, you won't disappointed. Their music is multi-layered and executed to the absolute perfection. Not so long ago I knew nothing of this band and now I can't wait to listen to more material from them. I will definitely look into their first album first chance I get and will be looking forward to listen to more of their future work. Big big thumbs up to Raintime for the fantastic album Flies & Lies. The biggest surprise this year so far !