Saeko: Above Heaven - Below Heaven (2004)

Saeko (pronounced Siko in English) is a fascinating artist who is originally from Japan. At the turn of the millennium she decided to relocate to Europe in order to pursue a career as a Metal singer. The 2004 release of "Above Heaven - Below Heaven" realized that goal and brought an outstanding album to us.

This album is actually one of the reasons why I listen to to Power Metal music. Other bands of this genre like Helloween or Hammerfall never interested me - they produced well crafted music but for me these lacked an essential ingredient: Feeling. And this is where Saeko comes in: She combines brilliant vocals with power, feeling and aggression together with great guitar solos and original riffs and outstanding melodies. The album pushes from one song to another with an enormous amount of energy ("Nature Of Mortality") complimented by excellent ballads ("On The Way To Eternity"). Saeko's second album "Life" (2006) is a worthy successor and a recommendation as well. Unfortunately, she does not perform any longer - hopefully we'll see here one day back on stage again!

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Ghost Hill: Embrace the Chasm (2010)

Here comes one of my favorites so far of 2010: Ghosthill is a young band from Kaliningrad, Russia playing symphonic power metal. Traditionally, this genre of music is not considered to be very modern or inventive but on this venture musical arrangements are absolutely superb. Instrumental skills are stunning with great guitars solos, uplifting keyboards and the vibrating voice of singer Mira. It is surprising to see how the band managed to get old fashioned keyboards sounds ("The Mist") transfered into a very modern context. The same goes for the Autotune (or Cheer) effect on the singers voice ("Silent Night"). The band took some risks here but the results are very rewarding.
One might argue that the singer's English language abilities are not the best ones but I think it contributes actually to the charm of this enjoyable listen. In fact, I would have liked to hear songs in Russian as well because I often prefer the artist's mother tongue over English - maybe that is something that we will see in the future. I deeply wish the band all the success in the future! Go buy the album!

You can also find most of the band's songs at youtube.

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