Beseech: Souls Highway
2002 Napalm Records 52-minutes

Soft vocals by Lotta and a slow pace of hard rock mixed with some
male voice make up the majority of Illusionate's feel. Between The
Lines picks us up with a slightly harder sound and a good mixture or
male/female vocals. After only having heard their 1998 debut, this
3rd album is quite different then the gothic death doom the band
originally sounded like. I guess they wanted to join the more hard
rock gothic style that is now basically mainstream music in Europe.
Blinded is a strong song with beautiful atmosphere a potential hit
single for sure. Songs like Endless Waters and Fiction City let you
know that this is most definitely not a heavy metal band, but melodic
hard rock not far removed from a band like Brave with its added
instrumental harmonies. That is shines through well on the beautiful
Sunset 28. The rest of the album of the songs fall somewhere in the
same sound as described above. The bonus track Gimme Gimme Gimme is
a pop cover of the hit by Abba.

The one thing that makes this CD better then average for me is that
Lotta's voice sounds a lot like Anneke from The Gathering, however I
find Erik to be a rather sub-par gothic male vocalist who tries to
imitate the somberness of Type O Negative singer Peter. I guess in a
sense you might say Beseech is almost Sweden's answer to Lacuna Coil
only not as good. I think maybe this band would appeal more to a pop
or female audience then your average metal fan. If you are into the
slow gothic rock you will find this a worthy purchase, but others can
just avoid it unless they need some new background music.

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