Female-fronted hard rock band Scorching Winter based in Melbourne, Australia have released their latest album Victim.
By Jane Howkins.
Scorching Winter are an Australian metal band from Melbourne, playing a form of symphonic/power metal that combines beautiful orchestral music, electrifying riffs, and the vocal stylings of frontwoman Tina Papadimitriou.
Victim is the band’s first full length release, and as such what they have achieved here is very impressive. Like many bands in their genre, they’ve gone for a themed approach and given the album a concept, highlighted by the fact that each song is preceded by ‘Chapter I, Chapter II…’ etc. It’s a fairly ambitious approach, but one it’s one that works and shows the level of thought and dedication that the band have put into the creation of this release.
One of the most impressive things about Victim is the instrumentation and musical arrangements the band have created to back their songs. For the most part, the music is absolutely beautiful and stands up well aside similar stuff from other bands in the future. Such musical arrangements are important for a symphonic metal band, so it’s certainly impressive for Scorching Victim’s first full release to sound this good, with a feel to it that is already comparable to acts such as Nightwish, Epica, and Within Temptation. The metal elements stand out too, giving a hard backbone to the more classical style.
One thing that does slightly let the band down here are frontwoman Tina Papadimitriou’s vocals. Don’t get us wrong, she is a superb vocalist but compared to the instrumentation her singing quality sometimes lets the side down a little. To sing in a band of this genre, it is important to have a vocalist of impeccable quality – especiallyconsidering that many of symphonic singers have an operatic background. Whilst this background is not always necessary, it is important to be able to stand out from the crowd and vocally Papadimitriou just misses out on that, especially against such lush background music. She’s still a great singer and for a first full release this is great, so hopefully next time around this will have improved. We’re still excited to hear what Scorching Winter do next, and we hope they can manage to match their peers in this very demanding genre.