Year: 2024
Total Time: 48.36
Label: Roxx Records

My opinion about Christian Metal and Rock music has never been the best. The truth is that on our side of the planet it is not so popular. Listening to the new album of the multinational (officially Swiss) RAINFORCE, my opinion hasn’t changed much.

Their second album, “Almost Holy” was released in 2024 and has many of the elements you would expect from such a release. Quite retro Heavy Metal aesthetics and melodies, nice guitar parts both from the main guitarists Michael Piranio and Andy La Morte as well as from the guest guitarists like Mick Jelinic (TERRAPHOBIA) on “Rockin’ Through The Night” or Fil Guzman Vicente (ADORAMUS) on “Silent Night” and Christian themes as it is evident by the song titles like “John The Baptist”, “I Believe” etc. However, the recipe is lacking some ingredients mostly due to Jordan Cutajar’s vocals which lack any μmelody and versatilty that is theoretically necessary in this subgenre of Metal music and are quite flat. Compositionally they present some nice ideas like in “Just Another Song” which even starts with a powerful solo but as hard as I tried I couldn’t find another song that stands out.

Without being a bad album, it lacks that sparkle that would ignite the flame and make you listen to eat for a second or third time. Nevertheless, “Almost Holy” would probably find frutile ground among the romantic metallers who love the 80s’ or early 90s’ and surely the fans of Christian Metal.

Rating: 6/10
Editor: Kostas Boudoukos
Related Link: RAINFORCE – Official Page