Band:	Seven Spires
Album:	A Fortress Called Home
Style:	Symphonic metal
Release date:	June 21, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. A Fortress Called Home
02. Songs Upon Wine-Stained Tongues
03. Almosttown
04. Impossible Tower
05. Love's Souvenir
06. Architect Of Creation
07. Portrait Of Us
08. Emerald Necklace
09. Where Sorrows Bear My Name
10. No Place For Us
11. House Of Lies
12. The Old Hurt Of Being Left Behind

Symphonic metal generally has to balance two things: not sounding like it's just a song with some strings slapped on top of it, and still being catchy.

I guess it should be a sign of how strong a genre is that, whenever this one band comes out with a record, I have to talk about the state of the genre. You don't see me doing that with every disso-death or stoner doom album I review, right? Sure, me reviewing symphonic metal is something that happens about as often as Christmas does, and I'm pretty sure the last time I did, it was actually for Seven Spires previous album. So maybe it's on me with being out of touch with the genre, even if I did hear quite some symphonic metal I liked, like Nocturna or Ad Infinitum, but I admit that no other band really captured my fancy for the genre, and if they did, it was mostly because they were like symphonic black metal or symphonic prog metal, not symphonic metal first and foremost.

Which is why I came with that "balance" thing. Having some strings, or even worse, just some keys, slapped on top a song is a pretty good embellishment, and with some great enough melodies or a penchant for atmosphere building they can really elevate the music more than if they were absent. But it's the songwriting itself that really needs to justify it's "symphonicness", more so than the sound palette itself. Whether it's synth melodies akin to a piano, or a layer of synth melodies akin to strings, or a layer of very icy string if black metal is concerned, or actual orchestral instruments, it's how they're integrated in the song that matters more to me. That's what I feel Seven Spires exceled at. They had the sound palette items that are associated with the genre, but also the songwriting chops to use them effectively.

There's also this pitfall in symphonic metal called "sounding too much like Nightwish", and of course what they mean by this is "sounding too much like the popular era of Nightwish". There are instances in A Fortress Called Home that do bring to mind Nightwish, but it's more of the proggier new-era Nightwish, as well as the Nightwish that tries to sound like a movie/video game soundtrack, so often times the "sounds like" train of thought goes straight to the latter for me. That's just some moments of course, Seven Spires do the "not sounding like it's just a song with some strings slapped on top of it" by having quite an intricate prog-like structures to the songs, and though it's nothing new for the band, having the metal base of the songs have elements of melodic death/black metal in addition to the power metal in a way that goes beyond just having harsh vocals really hits for me.

And then there's the "still being catchy" part, though this is admittedly much simples, though that's somewhat implied. Even with the more intricate structures, a lot of emphasis is on creating choruses that keep some sort of a pop appeal to the songs, or at least to parts of them. A lot of the heavy lifting in that regard is done by Adrienne Cowan's amazing vocal performance, and that's not just because of her technical versatility (I'm sure you can find plenty more vocalists even more technically proficient) but because of that versatility is used for both a more accessible catchiness and for a strong emotional core in songs like "Love's Souvenir" or "Emerald Necklace". The former is especially hard hitting for having an actual violin instead of sampled orchestration, and even if the orchestration throughout the album isn't noticeably artificial, that song really makes the difference.

I criticized Gods Of Debauchery for putting so much music in a single sitting instead of pushing for a more lean approach, while also admitting that Seven Spires' standard of quality is so high that they can get away with that. For A Fortress Called Home that becomes an even more moot point. Even if the album is more than ten minutes shorter than its predecessor, it's filled by even more moments that feel very vital. By that I mean moments that really feel like they stand out more than just being another song on the album, whether it's the aforementioned violin in "Love's Souvenir", the downtrodden extreme metal in "Where Sorrows Bear My Name", or the doom riffing of "House of Lies" alongside its flutes, or the emotional mantra being sung in both harshes and cleans on "The Old Hurt Of Being Left Behind", A Fortress Called Home is an album that just knows how to use its runtime and justify every moment that it includes.