Confidence, the Swedish band behind the recent release Prelude have a somewhat interesting theory: They believe that the Metal and Rock scene have become increasingly standardized and similar over the last few years. I suppose that, to some extent at least, that is true. And, like the responsible and talented musicians they are, they go about to re-introduce real, good music to the masses and bring it in to the modern age. Fascinating premiss and quite the promise.
In order to accomplish this, they have written a series of songs (four on Prelude, their debut album), all of which with great focus on lyrics and vocals. As a result the vocal track dominates the album with high-pitched singing and epic screams when deemed appropriate. This is backed up by fairly upbeat and rhythmic guitars and drum in the background, playing traditional Power Metal, with the occasional solo, some long, some short and the mood-creating, ever-present keyboard.

As for the length of the album it has been kept deliberately short (as mentioned before, only four songs) seeing as Confidence considers the traditional music industry to be outdated, and instead prefer to release a few songs digitally every few months instead of slaving a whole year of more in order to get enough songs to fill an entire album.

Overall the album is pretty decent, great powerful vocal and talented musicians to help carry his voice (as well as lyrics) to the masses. Sadly though, the band put a little too much effort into the vocals track and a little too little into the music behind it, meaning that the album misses something whenever the vocalist is not singing, which damaged this otherwise great Power Metal album.
Likewise, the whole concept of releasing songs more often digitally is a good concept, however I still prefer to have the opportunity to put on a full-length album on the stereo an run around listening to it for hours instead of being tied to my computer at all times.

So, summing up, dozens of points for innovative thinking as well as for great lyrics and vocals, and minus a few for putting too little of an effort into the musical part of the album.
Nevertheless, this is their début, and I have great anticipations regarding their future.
Because no matter how you slice it, the musicians on Prelude are very talented.

www.confidenceofficial.com