Stability through changes - A review of Chaos Magic's Furyborn

Many things have changed and yet many things haven't changed at all for Chaos Magic. Four years ago, the band started as a collaboration between Finnish guitarist, producer and songwriter Timo Tolkki who had met Caterina Nix years earlier. Now, Chaos Magic is a band consisting of four Chilean musicians along side the female singer. The album also features several guest vocalists with Evergrey's Tom Englund, Rainbow's Ronald Romero and former Sirenia vocalist Ailyn. Despite these important changes, Furyborn is similar in style to predecessor Chaos Magic.

The quintet offers contemporary symphonic power metal with a few electronic music touches. The songs vary from powerful rock tracks like ''You Will Breathe Again'' to airy ballads like ''Beware of Silent Waters'' with its enchanting acoustic guitars. The band still recalls numerous female fronted commercially successful symphonic rock and metal bands one and a half decades ago like L'Âme Immortelle, Evanescence and Within Temptation. Furyborn would have been all the rage fifteen years ago but isn't too impressive these days. The album is enjoyable to listen to thanks to the skillful melodic lead vocals, the numerous guest vocalists and the diversified song writing but the record fails to leave a deeper impression due to a lack of creative ideas, crunchy production and energetic instrumental performances.

In the end, Furyborn is only a slight improvement over the average predecessor and should only be interesting for fans of melodic symphonic metal fans. This album could also be a good record for younger audiences to discover metal music like L'Âme Immortelle, Evanescence and Within Temptation fifteen years earlier. This record is good for what it is but ultimately rather forgettable.

Final rating: 65%