French Heavy Metal has certainly been making a resurgence of late, with a certain GOJIRA leading the charge. However, today we are focussing on the Parisian quartet, FURIES and their most recent release "Fortunes Gate". Straight away looking at the artwork I was surprised at how alike it seemed to certain DC comic characters, especially one of the persons likeness to Harley Quinn. However, the bold imagery and colours catch the eye and it is certainly a good piece of artwork.

The record opens with "You And I" which instantly grabs the listeners attention as the fast paced and bouncy riffage had me tapping my feet in anticipation. The powerful and almost haunting vocals of Lynda work in tandem with Zaza to drive the track forwards at a relentless pace. The titular "The Fortune's Gate" and "Voodoo Chains" continue to accelerate through the tracking with feel good and stereotypical Heavy Metal music, clean and skilful guitar breaks add some meat to the bones of the record and just go to show what FURIES are capable off as musicians.

As the record rolls through the next three tracks, one can almost start to see a pattern to how the songs are each composed, strong introductions, a catchy and bouncy main section, guitar break before a strong finish. This became very hard to ignore for myself and as such I found that I wasn't enjoying the music quite as much as I should any more. I was focussing on the sections a bit too much.

However, that is not to say that this is not a good album, I feel that with a few less, for lack of a better term, samey compositions then FURIES could well be a band to be reckoned with, the intensity and sheer love for their craft is evident and I really want to see what they are capable of if they mix it up just ever so slightly.