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Towersound is made up of three brothers, and the amount of work that went into this first full-length album is impressive: Everything is done by the three band members, from the web site and the booklet up to the actual songs and performance. The booklet alone is a work of art: It includes the full lyrics (in a readable font, thank you), and the art that serves as the background to the lyrics of each song is actual related to the lyrical content. Very, very nicely done.

Towersound play melodic heavy metal with a strong tendency for the epic style. This is an ambitious piece of work, especially for a first album, clocking at over one hour and with very rich and "detailed" lyrical content. And that is the problem right there. Each song (except the instrumental ;)) has so much in terms of lyrics that the vocalist is almost stuck in a near-spoken style from beginning to end, and there's not much room left for some instrumental parts in the songs. You get the occasional guitar parts, but it's a bit like in our democratic institutions: Yes, you may speak your opinion, but you have 15 seconds to do so. I have no problem with meaningful lyrics, but this is metal and just like the next guy I want the instruments - especially the guitars - to occupy a lot of room in a song. For this to happen, each song would have needed to be several minutes longer. Great work on the lyrics nonetheless - but there's more to a song. The vocalist shows potential, but it is not fully exploited here. Save for a few exceptions, the singing is quite monotone from beginning to end, and has more of a "spoken" than a "sung" feel to it. The production is a bit flat as well and that doesn't help matters here.

With that said, this is still a very interesting album. The lyrics are well written and quite dark, and the music combines the feeling of darkness with that of hope, so it's like there's light at the end of the tunnel. What I found missing is the instrumental content which is drowned by the omnipresent vocals. Even though it's interesting to listen to, you won't remember much in terms of melodies or what have you once the album is over. Definitely the kind of album you listen to only for the lyrics and not for kick ass music.

This band shows a lot of potential. Brennus Music's releases are usually at least good, and this is what this album is. But Towersound have potential to be very good, if not excellent. A future release in a professional studio with a real producer, and songs that leave more place to the instruments by streamlining the lyrics would do a lot of good, with the added effect of giving more opportunity for the vocalist to "sing" more and with more variety. A solid effort hampered only by going a little over the top. A band to watch for.