Italian Bejelit have been around for a decade now. 'You Die and I...' is their third full length album, but the first material from the band that I get to hear. What "Bejelit" is I do not know, but Bejelit the band serve some heavy/power metal. And sound very Italian...

Bejelit do not settle to samey songs, but just like their country mates Vision Divine and Labÿrinth, they add in quite a lot of varying building material. All the music is dramatised, more or less so. 'Rostov' is an atmospheric and heavy (usually Italian power metal heavy is not very heavy at all, mind you) opener, that captures a listener. However, during these 50 minutes the compositions tend to suffer from all the variety. The first half of the album is far superior. Gothic elements play pretty strong part on most of the songs, but 'Your Personal Hell' is a pure Stratovarius style kicker. 'Astaroth' ends the first half with style, presenting very soft mood next with groovy power metal.

The second half opens with '2K12', which still kicks nicely. With 'Death-Row' comes the boredom. The last three songs are the longest ones on the album, and this means one thing: More shattered compositions. They all have good parts in them, but only the epic closer 'Orfeo 10' manages to retain at least some kind of a red thread. 'Good Night My Shade' is the mandatory ballad of the album, and is just as sugary as an Italian ballad can be.

The biggest, yes, much worse than the incoherent songs, problem is the production. It is totally powerless and the instruments and the vocals do not fit together, as it is all so nonfunctional. As the music is very big sometimes, the production simply destroys it all. The vocals are pretty able, at their most boisterous sounding like Marco Hietala of Tarot and that small band, wossisname..? Power metal singing is varying, at times sounding similar to Sonata Arctica's Tony Kakko, but also more powerful at other times, sadly going a bit over the edge, resulting in awful hollering. But I also accuse the bad production; as I said, the instruments do not fit together, and guess do adding the vocals into that soup help the situation?! No they do not. But one thing is sure: Big accent. Why do the letter "h" dissappear from all the words beginning with it? "Heaven" sounds like "eeven", "head" like "ead" and so on. I do not get all the lyrical meanings, which at least partly happens because of bad English. The album's cover artwork looks pretty professional, by the way.

Bejelit managed to surprise me positively, but also make me disappoint so many times and about various elements. I can only advice the band to get a professional producer next time. That alone should lift the band up many levels. The incoherent song material comes after that. As it is now, they are above average and hopefully going into the right direction.

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/05/2010 18:04