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Xandria’s new album is a symphonic goth-metal filled with neoclassical pathos. Unfortunately, the banal pop melodies force us to deal with (forgive me) a metal version of Modern Talking ('Sisters of the light'). Quite a few songs included on ‘Salome’ seem to be perfectly fit for the qualifying rounds of the Eurovision Song Contest. In my mind’s eyes I can already see, how successfull those tracks could be in Turkey or Italy. Let’s not forget, Lordi already won the Eurovision once. ‘Salome’ would fit ideally into the musical taste of passionate teenagers crazy about Nightwish, who haven’t been aquainted with better music so far. Bah, even Nightwish leaves Xandria far behind. On the bright side, we can hear some good Arabic motifs in ‘Sisters of the light’ and ‘Vampire’ (watch out guys – there’s a part about some 'virgin of the night' there). The vocalist tries too hard to be a second Tarja Turunen. Each track follows the same pattern – shrill riffs interrupted by strings and followed by some strumming right out of the 80s. This is clearly visible in tracks like ‘Salome’ and ‘On my way’, to name but a two. A couple of tracks feature singing in a duet – ‘Emotional man’ and ‘Only for the stars in you eyes’. ‘Firestorm’ uses a lot of exotic instuments and after three minutes, scares the listener with a sudden growling – that’s quite a decent track. ‘The wind an the ocean’, an acoustic piece with some piano elements, gives us some breathing space. The album is closed by an unlucky thirteen – an awfully dull remix of ‘Sisters of the light’, originally composed by Jesus on Extasy. I feel fully excused when criticising Xandria, as the band already became a symbol for crap on many musical message boards. Let’s just hope no one invites Xandria to play in Poland. That would be a real waste of money for a lot of teenagers.

Tracklist:
01.Save my life.
02.Vampire.
03.Beware.
04.Emotional man.
05.Salome.
06.Only for the stars in your eyes.
07.Firestorm.
08.A new age .
09.The wind and the ocean.
10.Sisters of the light.
11.Sleeping dogs lies.
12.On my way.
13.Sisters of the light-Jesus on Extasy remix.


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