Review: Marble “S.A.V.E.” [Sliptrick records]

Here is a pretty cool mix of power, heavy and symphonic metal, with catchy choruses, powerful verses and riffs, and an overall epic and fun tone to it. There are some powerful, high-pitched and perfectly clear vocals, nice melodies and a bunch of interesting stories.

This album has a pretty convincing blend of heaviness and melody, and of different musical elements, often in one song. This showcases the band’s creativity, and lets the album feel fresh and unrepetitive. There’s always some interesting idea to find, and to describe in a review. Just compare Silver Coins’s industrial-influenced intro, to its heavier verses with the lead female singer’s heavy metal type of vocals and the male back-up vocalist’s growls, like a sort of power metal beauty and the beast duet, and the choir that comes in the last part. Or Mine, with an intro of a quiet keyboard turning into explosive riffs, with fast-paced verses and a powerful chorus, which is sung more quietly on the outro. Or the never-ending energy and heaviness of To Feed the Worms, which is honestly one of the most perfect heavy/power metal tracks of the album.

In fact, the whole album has a never-ending energy, with its fast, powerful verses and choruses and wild riffs. The vocals, whether it’s the growls, the powerful choir, or the lead vocalist’s energetic delivery that expresses all emotions loudly and often sounds like it’s trying to out-fast the instruments, also contribute to give this album its great energy and bombastic sound.

Aside from their energy and blend of different styles, the band showcases their creativity by also making more complex and epic songs. My favorite example of that is the long and ever-changing What Leads Us To and its sort of philosophical questions about human lives and the choices we make. Or Heartless Disease, about an epidemic and My Mask Collection, about different roles that you sometimes have to play. Both songs are less heavy, but contain a lot of complex instrumentation and strangely gripping stories.

Then there are a few slightly stranger tracks, like the ballad Darker Shade of Me and its strange repetitive riff. Or the more symphonic and pessimistic Timeline and Daymare Town (points for the pun), about death, pain, the pointlessness of human lives in the grand scheme of things, and cursed towns, maybe cursed worlds in general?

So this is an interesting album overall, with its variety of styles and cool stories and vocals. Not every track is great, but the good ones are really worth a listen. It’s a very enjoyable and well-made album. I’ve already reviewed a few albums and said they were some pretty good heavy/power metal, but I think this one is a lot better.

Release date: February 16th, 2021

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