{"id":18050,"date":"2019-01-07T09:15:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T14:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=18050"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:48:43","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:48:43","slug":"album-review-brave-the-calmthe-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=18050","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Brave &#8211; The Calm|The Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Brave \u2013 The Calm|The Storm<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Release Date:<\/strong> January 8, 2019<\/p>\n<p>After 10+ years, Virginia prog\/rock\/metal\/folk\/whatever band has returned to the scene with a new album entitled The Calm|The Storm.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be honest.\u00a0 Whenever a band I love puts out new material I get pretty nervous because first off, I want it to be great and second, I know I would have to be honest in my reviewing of their album.\u00a0 With Brave being one of my all time favorite bands, the pressure was one for both of us but guess what?\u00a0 This album fucking rules.<\/p>\n<p>The Calm|The Storm is somewhat a conceptual album but instead of a conceptual story, the concept is actually based upon the title.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI Will Wait\u201d kicks the album off and right away it sounds and feels like Brave hasn\u2019t missed a step at all.<\/p>\n<p>The lush keyboard arrangement coupled with the unmistakable rhythm section of drummer Trevor Schrotz and bassist Ben Kelly sets the tone for the song as Michelle Schrotz\u2019s distinct and pristine vocals enter into what becomes an epic track.\u00a0 Kelly\u2019s bass playing his the highlight of this song and it\u2019s great to hear Ben really stepping out to the front.\u00a0 Leave it to Brave to make a four minute song sound like an epic number!<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9VhmZAQ4hB8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Calm portion of the album continues with \u201cNo Gravity\u201d which has violinist Suvo Sur stepping to the front to showcase his ability to break the mold of the average violinist.\u00a0 The album continues on with the ethereal beauty of \u201cA Thousand Miles of Sand.\u201d In this song, I can hear a heavy Queensrych, Empier\/Promised Land era track.\u00a0 The lyrics of this song are so full of vivid imagery that it definitely is a track to be savored and not just played as background music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSummertime\u201d breaks up the album\u2019s dark undertones with a lively, upbeat song that has Schrotz reminiscing on the carefree, youthful days of past.\u00a0 I really didn\u2019t dig this song when I first heard it but after really listening to it in context, it\u2019s a truly great song and it actually does give us a break before we forge headfirst into The Storm.<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cH0uLNwCHbE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cRace to the End\u201d features the remarkable voice of While Heaven Wept vocalist Rain Irving, this song isn\u2019t just the beginning of the storm but the dynamics between these two voice create a beautiful tension and honestly makes me wish that Irving and Schrotz would collaborate more in the future kind of like the Allen\/Lande albums.\u00a0 I think these two could really do something special.\u00a0 The show stopper for me is &#8220;Electric Ravens&#8221;, the electric version of the b-side of their 2014 single &#8220;Surrounds Me&#8221; which was called &#8220;Three Ravens.&#8221;\u00a0 Hearing this song played with a different dynamic kind of caught me off guard.\u00a0 I love the acoustic version so much but this song just took on a whole new life on The Calm|The Storm and reminded me of something Lacuna Coil would&#8217;ve done back in the Comalies\/Karmacode eras.\u00a0 This is the kind of song I could picture being a hit for them.<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6hntRqfwFMA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Calm|The Storm isn\u2019t what I would call a comeback.\u00a0 It\u2019s a long awaited continuation of the Brave discography. The album showcases much growth in the band musically as performers and songwriters.\u00a0 This is hands down Brave\u2019s best material to date as they once again refuse to adhere to the rules of any particular genre.\u00a0 Brave plays one of kind of music: Brave music and it puts them above all those that so hard to be one particular thing.\u00a0 Dynamics, versatility, and no fear; Brave lives up to their name without a doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brave \u2013 The Calm|The Storm Release Date: January 8, 2019 After 10+ years, Virginia prog\/rock\/metal\/folk\/whatever band has returned to the scene with a new album entitled The Calm|The Storm.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be honest.\u00a0 Whenever a band I love puts out new material I get pretty nervous because first off, I want it to be great and second, I know I would have to be honest in my reviewing of their album.\u00a0 With Brave being one of my all time favorite bands, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":18052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[698,2087,2080,2085,2077,180,2078,2090,2084,2086,2079,2076,2088,2089,1844,2081,2082,817,805,2083],"class_list":["post-18050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news","tag-brave","tag-classic-rock","tag-classic-rock-blog","tag-hard-rock","tag-hard-rock-blog","tag-heavy-metal","tag-heavy-metal-blog","tag-instrumental-bands","tag-mailchimp","tag-metal","tag-metal-blog","tag-music-blog","tag-prog-rock","tag-progressive-rock","tag-psych-rock","tag-psych-rock-blog","tag-psychedelic-rock-blog","tag-rain-irving","tag-while-heaven-wept","tag-wordpress"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/12227112_961541733917517_3916608455923056034_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19899,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18050\/revisions\/19899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}