THE FLAME WITHIN (E)

Stream Of Passion (SoP) used to be an international band, founded by Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon). After their debut Embrace The Storm and a live album/DVD, Arjen Lucassen, guitarist Lori Linstruth and keyboardist Alejandro Milan left the band, leaving vocalist-violinist Marcella Bovio (Mexico), bass player Johan van Stratum and drummer Davy Mickers - both from the Netherlands - with a dilemma: to go on or to break up. They wouldn’t give up, so new musicians were recruited and Bovio, currently residing in the Netherlands, started to write new songs. Eventually the whole band - all musicians hail from the Netherlands - participated and The Flame Within, the fruits of all these efforts, produced by Joost van den Broek (ex-After Forever) and Jochem Jacobs (Textures), was presented to the Dutch public and hit the charts immediately! In the meantime the album was released in many other countries as well. When the recordings were practically finished, the band saw Davy Mickers leave for personal reasons. However, Martijn Peters (NoVact) was an excellent substitute. SoP wanted to create strong, energetic and emotional songs suitable to perform live. You can call it pop metal, female fronted metal, gothic metal, progressive metal, all descriptions would fit, but more important would be the statement that SoP have realized the album they set out to create: melodic, powerful with heavenly beautiful vocal lines and quite an emotional as well as energetic impact. All compositions are within the limit of six minutes and - except for the vocals - they are definitely different from those written by Lucassen. The band included one cover, namely Street Spirit, originally recorded by Radiohead and they did a very well job re-creating this tune. It's hard to compare SoP with Nightwish, After Forever, Leaves' Eyes or Sirenia. The music may well be in the same vein, but Marcella Bovio’s vocals are extremely characteristic and really one of a kind. The beautiful ballad Run Away brings tears to your eyes and has a lovely piano and string arrangement. All other tracks have this very interesting and constant tension between the lovely voice of Marcella Bovio and the piano, as well as the subtle orchestral arrangements played by Jeffrey Revet on the one side and the heavy, powerful riffs by guitarists Eric Hazebroek and Stephan Schulz, bass player Johan van Stratum and drummers Davy Mickers en Martijn Peters on the other. The tasteful artwork has been created by the Brazilian artist Gutavo Savez and features SoP’s beautiful singer. The album is an ultimate mix of progressive rock, melodic female fronted metal and heavy pop music! It's highly recommended for all fans of bands like Evanescence, Kingfisher Sky and Within Temptation.