ECLIPTICA — Journey Saturnine (review)

ECLIPTICA — Journey Saturnine album cover

Album · 2012 · Heavy Metal

2/5 · 2012-06-10
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Journey Saturnine is the second studio album by Austrian power metal act Ecliptica. It was released in early 2012. Many online music databases may have you believe it is actually the fourth album by the band, but I have it on authority of a band member (which is backed up on their website) that this isn’t the case. The commonly listed albums The Legend of King Artus and The Hidden Legend were made by a studio project called Ecliptica, not the band Ecliptica, and the band considers them different entities despite the band Ecliptica being pretty much a direct descendant of the studio project. Regardless Journey Saturnine is the first release from Ecliptica since their 2008 debut studio album Impetus. So with that I suppose semi-interesting bit of history out of the way, let’s discuss Journey Saturnine.

Journey Saturnine is essentially a typical European styled melodic power metal album. It veers into traditional heavy metal and hard rock territories in varying amounts, but once given time to sink in its clear that power metal remains the main focus here, especially when considering the typical aspects of the genre that the album has.

What isn’t typical for the album though, when considering metal in general rather than just power metal, is the vocal approach. Ecliptica uses both male and female voices but in stark contrast to the masses of acts it is not a beauty and the beast vocal team, although there are still growls in the album, as the lead male vocals are clean. In stark contrast for a second time it is not the female singer who comes across as the dominant one of the vocalists. I enjoy all the clean vocals in the release but don’t understand why the band would choose to add some growls to music of this nature. The band is firmly on the most commercial side of power metal and the growls add nothing to the music. This further backed up by the string clean vocals male and female alike, and the comparatively weak growl. Fortunately growling is the minority vocal approach but even so it stands as the album’s most glaring issue.

Despite what they do different, when listening to Journey Saturnine it never fails to come across as a very typical power metal release. It brings nothing new to the table and flaunts the clichés of the genre as much as it can. The band isn’t doing anything here that many other bands haven’t already done better and in much less commercial ways. I’m not dead set against commercialised metal but I do expect the band to be open about it and not dress it up with some growling vocals in what appears to be an attempt to restore some proper metal grit to the release.

As it stands the songs on Journey Saturnine are enjoyable enough for what they are but there isn’t a single track which sees the band move out of their comfort zone and with that in mind, there really is nothing here to keep more than the real die hard power metal fan interested for long. Apart from the needless growling there isn’t anything inherently bad here but Journey Saturnine comes across as another of those now all too common metal albums that sound as if they’re not tailored towards a metal audience. Other examples would be the self-titled album of Amaranthe (2011) and Within Temptation’s The Unforgiving (2011), although unlike Journey Saturnine and Amaranthe The Unforgiving is unashamedly a commercial metal album, and although the genre is different Ecliptica could really use taking a leaf out of Within Temptation’s book here, because I can’t help thinking that if they got rid of those growls the album would sound more openly commercial and that in turn would make its own merits stand out all the more. While I’m aware that will go against the majority view of metalheads I will reiterate; commercial metal does not mean bad metal. For Journey Saturnine a middle of the road rating is deserved.

5.2/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))