review: Everfrost

Everfrost

Winterider

Rockshots Records

6 August 2019

The central person behind Everfrost is Benjamin Connelly, who began the idea years ago with the Snowkid solo project. According to Metal Archives, there was a Snowkid 2013 album, but it’s not clear where people can hear that music. Then in 2015 there was Everfrost’s debut with Benjamin still pretty much doing everything, it seems. Now in 2019 Benjamin has found his troops to join him in this crusade to bring joy to Finland and the world. At this point the band has its sights set on big, huge melodies and gigantic pop metal songs that will help Finland dance its way out of the upcoming winter.

Probably the most necessary question for the potential listener goes something like this: Are you supportive of pop metal that is drenched, positively soaked in happy keyboards? If the answer is “yes,” then proceed without caution and enjoy yourself. If the answer is “maybe,” then this album could convince you, assuming you want to find out just where does this music leads, and it’s probably not the mosh pit but the dance club.

The Finnish band has a wicked sense of humor. When listening to the album we did not even notice a song called “Die Young.” It sounded like another pop metal tune on the album. It turns out that it is a cover of an artist named Keesha. We had to look up the original. It turns out that the Keesha has one of the most annoying voices that you will hear. Simply irritating. The new pop metal version is like the original, but with guitar, as expected, but the singing is not as annoying as the original. Speaking of irritating things, the singing on this album should be acceptable to the happy pop metal fan. The voice might be a bit nasal, we’re not sure, but it’s pretty good and it’s serviceable and fits the music rather well. It will be interesting to see if the singer decides to take some singing lessons to improve.

The songs are also pretty good and there are no big complaints if you like pop/dance metal. The only song that seems way off is “Above the Treeline” because in the middle the song begins to feel like a broken record; it stops and comes back to the previoius exact point, as if it cannot go forward, but apparently this is what the band wanted. We have checked out our version many times to see if there is something wrong, but the song’s time does go forward and does end as if everything’s ok, even though the music sounds damaged like a broken record. Weird. Maybe Finnish people think it is hilarious to make songs that sound like broken records?! Fans of happy keyboards dance pop metal, say hello to your new heroes. facebook.com/everfrostfinland