Face Off - The Colour of Rain Review
Hailing from Belgrade, Serbia, Face Off are a female fronted metal band reminiscent of many of the other alternative/gothic tinged heavy acts that have made their way onto the commercial metal market in recent years. Their debut album The Colour of Rain is packed with nine guitar heavy tracks perfectly matched with hauntingly beautiful vocals and meaningful lyrics. That together with the pulsating bass tones and heavy drums ensure that the album assaults your senses with no mercy and proves that Face Off are already a cut above the rest.
Marija Kovacevics vocals are on a par with Christina Scabbia and Sharon Den Adel, but Nightwish these guys aren't! Her voice is perfection and is shown off beautifully on Voices, with a scorching requiem that talks of pain whilst the thunderous accompaniment continues in the background. This track even gives the hint of male vocals reinforcing the power that this band has. Marija clearly enjoys delving deep into the emotional lyrics ensuring that everyone listening is fully aware of the passion therein. This is by no means symphonic metal, in fact there is nothing even remotely symphonic about this band. There are no keyboards, no orchestra samples and I can't even consider the vocals to be classical or operatic. They're sung with power and strength and are an amazing complement alongside the dominant guitars providing a perfect counterweight to the heavy drums. The smoothness of her voice almost amplifies the heaviness of the music.
The onslaught of drums and barrage of heavy dual guitar work from fellow founding member Stefan Vitasovic and Aleksandar Djordjic on War Against War is outstanding and introduces the material in all its fury. Stunning female vocals again, set alongside the crunching instrumental work and full on marching metal music.
This album has a bit of everything from incredibly heavy guitar riffs on Dream Chamber to the evocatively beautiful Fragile and I defy any metal fan not to find something they love about this album.
Now comes the important bit. This album is deceivingly addictive. At first listen, it appears to be just another straightforward nice, solid album that you can listen to every now and then but before you know it the albums on repeat and you're listening to it all the damn time! It's dark yet catchy and you'll get bits of different songs stuck in your head but I've loved every second of it.