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Edge of Attack is the debut full-length album by Canadian power metal act Edge of Attack. The album features three guest vocals appearances from Ivan Giannini (Derdian), Ryan Bovaird (Hallows Die) and Pellek (Damnation Angels) and was released in 2013.
The music on Edge of Attack is a mix of traditional heavy metal and power metal, with an occasional foray into thrash metal territory. The band seems to promote themselves as power-thrash but this is only really true for a minority portion of the music, most of the stuff here is heavy/power metal. In truth though their power-thrash material is the strongest on the album, so hopefully on future releases we’ll get to hear them going down this path and leaving the traditional metal elements behind. It’s quite a modern sound featuring a lead female vocalist with some additional vocals growled, and pretty much free of the so called cheese usually found in power metal acts, with perhaps the exception of the song Set the World Aflame, which is the one featuring Pellek, who takes over lead vocals from Edge of Attack’s Roxanne Gordey here. I’m not sure I approve of that move but ironically it’s the strongest song here in terms of composition.
The musicianship is superb, especially that of lead guitarist Jurekk Whipple. His solo work is one of the biggest highlights in the release. There are of course also some riffs of note but they generally don’t make as much of a lasting impression as Whipple’s leads. This is a very good backbone to build the rest of the album off of, but unfortunately the vocal department of Edge of Attack is a bit lacking, and drags my regard for a good number of the songs down a notch. Lead vocalist Roxanne Gordey is fine, if a bit unusual for the genre, being more of what you might expect from a singer in a rock band rather than a metal band, but hey, her voice works, surprisingly well in fact. The growls are the problem here, right from the opening In Hell showing how growls, when used the wrong way in genres that don’t by default use them, can ultimately harm the impact of a track. Fortunately the growls aren’t used as much within Edge of Attack so it’s important not to use the terms ‘harm’ and ‘ruin’ interchangeably, but at the same time I’m sure my regard for the album would have been kicked up a notch if Gordey was given free rein to do her thing.
A solid debut release from Edge of Attack, but a couple of simple changes to the way they perform their music would easily see them became a much stronger act. They should drop the growling, or at least get better at it because really it’s not the fact that growls are here at all that makes them not work, it’s because they’re just not that good. Scratch that, they should just drop them, because in Roxanne Gordey they’ve got a lead vocalist who is a bit different and they should be making the most of her voice. She doesn’t need, and more importantly their songs don’t need the growling. Also I’d like to hear more thrash elements. Power metal and thrash metal work better together than I think some give them credit for, and power-thrash tracks like In Hell and the title track have shown themselves to be among the best on the album. A great album tier rating is deserved, but by rights this album should easily have gone one better.
79/100
(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/edge-of-attack-edge-of-attack-t2970.html))