Empress hail from Philadelphia of the United States and they were formed, quite recently, in 2018. Their musical style belongs strictly to the area of symphonic metal with clear influences from Nightwish and Rhapsody Of Fire. “Fateweaver” is their first full recording effort without the support of any record label.
The album consists of nine songs, clearly aimed at symphonic metal. We should point out that the stagnancy that has existed for years in this particular genre prevents musicians from developing through it and the result of most releases can be simply characterized as acceptable.
Empress’ debut is no exception to the above. It is a fairly well-crafted album as far as the production is concerned, it brings out a dynamic, which is due more to the very good guitar riffs and guitars in general and less to the melodies (which are not bad, just very typical) and given that Barbara Blackthorne is a very good singer. The above itself shows a synthetic weakness.
From “Fateweaver” I singled out only “Black Arkana” and “Eventide”, a very good, almost seven-minute track with which to close a simply “OK” album.
Empress have chosen a very demanding kind of music which, as I mentioned above, has been in freefall for years and needs composers of the genre to exceed themselves in order to stand out. Time will tell if these guys have it or not.
