### Teodor Tuff: Soliloquy

#### 26/01/12 || Smalley

First off, “Teodor Tuff” is one of the worst band names I’ve ever come across in a label-sent, and that’s saying something. Second off, and fortunately for me, “Soliloquy” isn’t nearly as bad as you’d expect, looking at that band name; it isn’t good at all, but at least it wasn’t painful. Based off the first track, I thought this was gonna be some symphonic metal all the way with operatic, aria-style female vocals (and no men’s testicles to testosterone things up at all); I wouldn’t love that, but it’d at least be more engaging than what came after.

You see, after that short lil’ night at the opera, “Soliloquy” switches to vanilla, non-symphonic metal with highly-sanitized male vocals. That’s the only kind of vocals we get for the rest of the record too, so we don’t get any kind of clean/harsh balance here, one that should have been present (IMO). Neither the songwriting nor the production pack much bite either, so (besides the power metal-lite guitar cheese), too much of the final product bears an uncomfortable resemblance to some random, modern radio-rock song, especially the more power ballad-y moments. Well, done with a more epic feel than that, but nowhere near enough to inspire me to write any more.

5/10: Jeez, throw in some crunchy guitar or Cookie Monster grunting next time or somethin’.