Mehida

One would think that a band created by a former Sonata Arctica member would be a lot more fun than this. Mehida’s debut release, featuring the keyboard work of former Sonata ivory-tapper Mikko Härkin, is actually not that much fun at all. Instead, we get what sounds something like either a bad Dream Theater record or the Hellhammer/Jan Axel Blomberg prog project known as Winds, albeit without the string section. Surprisingly, Blood & Water is actually worse than the disappointing Winds release of this year. Because it’s this band’s debut and perhaps because the group’s songwriting chops haven’t yet fully materialised, the potential for these Finns is somewhat promising. Hopefully they’ll elect to go in one direction instead of trying to fuse chugging prog metal sounds with near-identical James LaBrie power metal vocals. Mehida certainly display the potential to pull something out of a hat and evolve into something better but until then, their debut simply isn’t up to snuff.