ENDED – Five Eyes

Five Eyes is the new album from Sweden’s Ended, their follow-up to 2014’s About To Fall. The new release is the debut of new singer Mickey Berquist, who takes over vocal duties from Lars Granat, giving Lars the ability to move to background vocals and concentrate on his guitar playing. Wise move on their part, as that focus combined with Berquist’s clean delivery provides a much fuller sound than that of the first album. Fuller, but sadly not full enough throughout the ten tracks.

Ended’s Progressive Metal approach is filled with ideas; the songs refuse to sit still and the musicianship is very solid, but the musicianship isn’t enough to mask the fact that there are very few truly compelling songs on the album. The album’s apparent difficulties lie more with the songwriting and the production than they do with the bands’ obvious talent as musicians.

The title track is a promising beginning, and follow-up “Proteus” is the strongest of the release and one of the harder rocking cuts to be found on Five Eyes. All the songs have interesting changes and there are some great individual musical moments from track to track; but those moments rarely gel to form a cohesive song. Berquist’s delivery often gets thinned out in the production, which is a mistake– “Altruism”, for one, is a good track that could have been a much better one with his contribution more prominent. Ended is a talented band and Five Eyes reveals a great deal of promise; if they concentrate on writing and crafting songs to match their chops they will be a band to watch.

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