Band:	Adrana
Album:	Perturbatio
Style:	Symphonic heavy metal
Release date:	June 07, 2008
A review by:	Bas

01. Enter Prusias
02. Prusias
03. Saneday
04. Moonchildren
05. Mortelle Fourberie Enfantine
06. The Nymph's Corpse
07. Gabrielus
08. Secret Gathering
09. Le Réveil De Markius
10. The Lords Of The Tapestry
11. Oprane
12. Ingalrian
13. Mortualia
14. Gabrielus [acoustic version]

A short while ago I received this CD from the young French quintet Adrana. Young indeed, as all five of the musicians are either twenty or nineteen years old. 'Perturbatio' is their first full album; they already released a demo titled 'The Tower Of Frozen Tears' in 2006. Their music can most accurately be called symphonic heavy/power metal in the vein of Nightwish but a bit less symphonic. Most of their material is in English but there are a few tracks in French on the album. While the album isn't exactly brimming with originality, it does have some nice ideas on it which haven't been used hundreds of times yet.

'Perturbatio' is the story of princess Adrana who sets out on a magical journey to restore peace to the fantasy world in which the story takes place. In this world we have angels, orcs, vampires and werebears (the bear version of werewolves I suppose) amongs others. As I'm not too big a fan of fantasy-stories I didn't really listen to the story very closely, but I'm sure some of you out there will be able to get more out of the story than I did.

Musically-speaking the young musicians pull off a nice job, especially soprano-vocalist Anae, who has a remarkably well-trained voice for her age, and Grhyll who plays the keyboard. The drumming is also quite good and there are also nice guitar parts on some of the songs. However the rough vocals, which are done by a guest musician and are quite rare on the CD anyway, are horrible.

In the end I can't say that this is a very good debut album though. The problem isn't the musicianship, nor is it the originality, the section this album lacks in is definitely the songwriting. I can't get rid of the feeling that Adrana might just have rushed into making an album as soon as possible. Probably it would have been better to first release another demo or two and gather some more live experience. It's a shame because they know how to play their instruments, but there are no really memorable passages (save for a few excellent keyboard parts), no catchy refrains, the flow of the music seems to be a bit weak sometimes and generally there is not a single song which makes me think "wow, this is really great stuff!".

I think in a few years Adrana might have greatly improved and they might just release something really good in the future, with such a vocalist and a keyboarder who are so talented at this age they could definitely make some awesome music. However for the time being they should first improve their songwriting a bit.