Levia - Fairy Scale (2010) - A new star on the Japanese rock and metal heaven - 83% (04/11/12)

Levia is a Japanese band that I discovered by pure coincidence as they have only released to singles to date and as the best seems yet to come from this promising underground formation with a few old members of the now disbanded "時空海賊 Seven Seas" formation. The band manages to create a quite gripping mixture of brutality and melody. Even though they are often cited as a power metak formation, they also have clear influences from genres such as gothic metal, traditional heavy metal, fast thrash metal and symphonic metal.

The title track of their very first output kicks off with a bang for example. It opens with surprisingly fast, hard and sharp riffs and takes no prisoners right from the start. After the brutal thrash or speed metal riffs, the vocals set in and one gets to understand why this band is cited as a power metal band. The vocals are in fact quite emotionally driven and melodic but that doesn't mean that they sound too cheesy or that they might contradict the instrumental work. The opposite is the case as the two extremes harmonize very well. The track is filled with a few changes of rhythm and has an intriguing songwriting. Only the chorus is repeated a little bit too often towards the end.

The second track is called "Over" and presents a more than solid mixture of hard rock riffs and European power metal melodies. A few decently used sound effects manage to get the final result a surprisingly dark touch while the riffs that sounded rather retro get more and more modern throughout the entire song. The band definitely puts a lot of intriguing ideas in only four minutes and the whole thing is still amazingly kept together by the tight rhythm and a truly catchy chorus. Out of three very well done songs, this one is my personal highlight.

The last song is named "Marvel" and is a little bit more pop orientated and slightly commercially flavoured but this kind of phenomenon is typically Japanese and won't surprise anybody who is used to the big names such as X Japan for example. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Japanese pop music after all, this song has still enough of fast riffs and over the top symphonic elements to keep this from being only a boring ballad. Japanese music is in fact everything but boring and mostly quite extreme in its approaches. The song is well enough executed to be a solid closer to a promising first strike.

This band could in fact soon become one of the new shining stars in the Japanese rock and metal scene. Anybody how likes Japanese rock and metal music should not miss to check this band out as soon as possible. Their first single is already overall quite convincing and professionally done but let me tell you that there is still better stuff to come from these four guys in the near future.