THESE NEW RAINTIME SONGS AREN’T DOING MUCH FOR ME

A few weeks ago Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges called for power metal fans to defend the (in his opinion) indefensible genre, a call which I readily answered because I love the stuff. Almost on cue, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable issued his own defense of power metal — I swear I didn’t prompt him — claiming that in its current unpopular state, playing power metal in 2010 is about as punk rock as you can get. I salute you, Sacha.

Raintime, one of my favorite Europowercheese bands, have come out with a new song this week on the MySpace page of their American record label, Bieler Bros. The song, “Fire Ants,” comes from their forthcoming March 16th release Psychromatic. Their last release Flies & Lies was an excellent album so I’m curious what this new record will hold for these fine Italian gentlemen, but based on the new track I’m kind of nervous. Musically the song is solid if unspectacular, but vocally it’s weak as hell. Nevermind the fact that Claudio Coassin has ditched his vocal growls completely… I’m more concerned with the fact that his clean vocals kind of suck. Perhaps this was the case on Flies & Lies and I just didn’t notice because the music and songwriting were so strong. There’s a new pre-pro track on Raintime’s own MySpace page which leaves me feeling pretty much the same way.

Way to not give me any more ammo in my power metal argument, guys. With Mercenary ditching half their band last year and Gus G.’s obligation to Ozzy over Firewind for the immediate future, what have we modern power metal fans got left?

-VN