Band:	Endless Main
Album:	Sea Of Lies
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	May 2011

01. Intro
02. Home
03. Angels And Demons
04. Only Once
05. Revenge
06. Shared Hopes Of Romance
07. Once Upon A Time

It takes quite a bit of courage to record yourself singing. Especially when you can't sing worth a damn.

Wait a second. No. Scratch that. That would mean that everyone who's ever belted out Miranda Cosgrove songs into their tape recorder or webcam is courageous (and who hasn't done that?). It takes courage to record yourself singing when you are an absolute Great Ape-clusterfuck in front of the microphone. So, yeah, I have a lot of respect for Endless Main's singer. The guy is a brave motherfucker. Because that dude can't sing worth anything.

And that's partly why this album is worth listening to.

It's not the above-average guitar and synth work, not the squeaky clean production--that's all typical of power metal. It's the orangutan orgy sounds on this thing. They're bad enough to be enjoyable. Which really only rarely happens.

But let's rewind for a moment. All the way back to my first listen (of many). At first, almost everything about this release gave me a headache: the cover design, the track titles, the synth intro, etc. It, in a stereotypical, sugar-coated sort of way, screams "power met-all-lalalalala!", with an Oprah-like penchant for stretching words out, "We gaaht meloh-dee!" And that sort of stuff frequently makes me gag.

Then the second track came on and what makes this album good tipped its hat in my direction; the power metal battle of the decade. The solid guitar and synth work vs. the singing. And what a weirdly enjoyable concoction that's created. You've got all the speedy, melodic technicality of power metal, but instead of having the vocalist drizzle glitter and sugar on top, he belts out something almost, well, edgy. Yelling, that's been done before. Screaming, yeah we all know about screaming. Singing, ugh. We know. But this is something different. Something I've never really heard before. And I honestly, really like it. It sucks, yeah. But, for power metal, it sucks in a good way.

Okay, so there are a few moments on this where the vocal performance sounds decent in a more traditional way. When he busts out his yareeish screams, he sounds positively talented. Hell, the guy is one of the guitarists too, so I can say for sure that he is talented. If he screamed more, and didn't attempt to hit notes way out of his range, he definitely could improve his stuff a lot. But then we'd have yet another power metal band. And that'd be boring.

So I say, keep up the shit singing. And I mean that sincerely. The guy's created something that's, in more than one way, enjoyable. Whether it was intentional or not. This might just be worth checking out. You've got your power metal staples, but rather than being generic, the singing makes the album different. And that's got to be worth something.