Band:	Aesma Daeva
Album:	The New Athens Ethos
Style:	Symphonic metal
Release date:	2003

01. The Origin Of The Muse
02. My Lost Melody
03. The Sons Of Heaven
04. Aviva I
05. Atma
06. Artemis
07. A Gathering Of Shades
08. Sirens
09. I Have Sailed With Odysseus
10. The Dawn Of New Athens
11. The Garden I Long For

American Gothic Metal, uh? Makes you think if it's good enough to compete with the all the great Gothic Metal bands coming from Europe these days.
Well, this is the third run for American Gothic/Darkwave Metal band Aesma Daeva, and their heaviest work so far, I've listened their previous works and they weren't Metal enough for a lot of people, now I think that the band will attract wider audiences with their improved heaviness.

firmly rooted in Gothic Metal and classical music, this female-fronted band shows us a more progressive side in this album. The opener "The Origin Of The Muse" is an 8 minutes heavy track with great riffs, great tempo changes, excellent female vocals and even some choirs. Some other killer tracks are the enchanting "The Sons Of Heaven" and the nice instrumental "The Garden I Long For".

Sadly, when you listen the first song, so complex and heavy, you imagine a album full of heavy riffs and great tempo changes, but I must say that I feel fooled here. Expecting more songs like the first one, I listened the whole album, while not a bad album, not even one song had the heaviness of the first one, I feel like they placed that song as the opener to hook people in and then slow things down, too bad.

The thing is, that this is an enjoyable album, but once they showed us their heavy part, I want more, because they do it so well, I want Aesma Daeva to get heavier!
Besides that complain, I place my bet on these band, because in everything else the album is great, instrumentation, musicianship and the cover art, even if the girl on the Cd cover looks like Annie Lennox.

Fans of softer Gothic Metal will be pleased, as for me, I'll wait impatiently for their next release, and then we'll see what's more this band has to offer to all of us.