Kokkola natives Everture have produced an interesting, varied and ultimately fulfilling listening experience with their new album Emerge. Ostensibly a modern melodic metal album with death metal tinges, you’ll find that there are actually many more levels to this album as you spend more and more time with it, which I’m convinced you’ll want to if you give the album a listen.

The key to the album’s success is the excellent vocal performance of singer Jere Kuokkanen; The possessor of a strong, melodically agile voice, he is able to soar above the churning guitars of Matti Hautakangas and Oskari Niskala (who both acquit themselves excellently throughout), commanding the listener’s attention with some fine singing. Although equally at home with heavier or soft material, his real power shines through on the more melodic tracks. Often times you’ll be reminded (in a good way) of Duran Duran‘s Simon LeBon, and it’s Kuokkanen’s voice and the melodic sensibilities that it possesses that gives this band the edge over the opposition.

As noted, this is a tremendously varied album; although a ‘modern’ metal band the guys don’t allow production tricks to dominate proceedings, preferring the power of the music on tracks such as Ivory Tower to speak for itself. At it’s most stripped back, as on penultimate track My 52 Shades, a slight nu-prog feel creeps in – you could imagine Aussie prog kings Caligula’s Horse coming up with something like this.

The gestation period of this album was apparently fraught with difficulty and expense, so it’s probably a miracle that they managed to record any material at all; that they’ve ended up with something as accomplished an sonically attractive as Emerge is a testament to the skill and dedication of all involved – they deserve some attention, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you give this a spin!

Emerge releases on March 19th.