To all Melodic Death Metal lovers, let me introduce you to Felo De Se.
Created in 2016 in Belgium by Joachim Kinet (guitar/vocals) as a solo project, the musician releases an EP in 2017 before hiring musicians in 2018. For Essence of Illusions, the band’s first album, Innokenty Gritskevitch (bass, Obsolete Humanity, ex-Orion’s Night), Lionel Delmay (guitar, Orion’s Night) and Benoit Hogge (drums, Coliseum) joined the adventure.
First album often means “first step in a big league”, and for Felo De Se, it’s also the first step as a full band. It is with a first song that melts soft and airy sonorities with groovy and more solid riffs that we discover this universe, based on a cold finnish-infulenced Melodic Death Metal, but very impressive. There will be plenty of melodies, and lead guitar will be far from being in the background! Whether it takes a bit of time before unveiling itself on Voices In The Mist, it will be more present since The Endless Path! The song is both aggressive, impressive and ice-cold, but also heady and tends to a dark atmosphere.
Majestic sounds amateurs will be conquered with Frozen Sun, the ones who prefer catchy tones will enjoy Strength of One, and if it’s heaviness that you love just wait for Let The Oceans Burn, but the band can also stay calm with Light of Norns, before unleashing the rhythmic. A faraway melody comes to haunt us on the impressive Morning Star, while Shattered Sky is more sharp, more incisive. Personally, Inner Conquest caught my heart, with this very calm saturated voice, its heady melodies, but the album is far from ending. Shades of The Sea comes to enchant us before unleashing the power of the rhythmic, then Equivocal comes to offer a last dose of a beautiful softness before leaving us on an acoustic version of Fall Of Ikaros, a composition from the band’s first EP, which takes another dimension.
It’s not unusual to discover bands, and Felo De Se is part of my discoveries. Essence of Illusions is a wonderful album, which connects several influences on a solid basis in order to offer us the project’s richness. To discover urgently.
90/100