Glasya - Fear

Angry Metal Guy 50

It’s been a fair minute since Glasya last graced these parts. The Portuguese symphonic power metal band first appeared in these halls in 2019 with their debut, Heaven’s Demise. I was personally not impressed, I’m sad to say—it offered little in the way of originality, and my feeling was that Glasya sounded like a hodgepodge of their contemporaries. Still, the band is one of genuinely talented musicians, and I believed at the time the project had promise. Six years later, they’re onto their third full-length, Fear, and I couldn’t help taking a look, curious simply to know if Glasya has come into its own in 2025.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fear still sounds like it’s been influenced by the same bands that have been influencing symphonic power metal for the last two decades. My promo sheet even informs me that the music is ideal for fans of Nightwish, Epica, and Visions of Atlantis. So straightaway, you have a good idea of what you’re getting: big orchestrations, operatic flourishes, more focus on keys than guitars. Songs are upbeat, choruses are big, and Eduarda Soeiro’s vocal performance is impressively grand. But I can’t claim Glasya has no clear identity anymore. The fast pace (see “Hunt of the Haunted” and “In Debris”) reminds me of Silver Bullet, and there’s definite aggression to the guitars (Hugo Esteves and Bruno Prates) that gets the head nodding early and often. Davon van Dave’s orchestrations are both more elaborate and dialled back, making them feel better merged with the music. On Fear, Glasya sound more confident and more self-assured than I’ve heard before, and it’s a great change from their debut.

Fear by Glasya

Fear is a concept album that follows a woman confronted by and overcoming her fears, and, unexpectedly, it’s here that I start to find fault. The decision to embed a narrative into the music is a fine one, and one Glasya have employed before, but there are two particular elements of Fear that detract from the experience for me, both of which seem to point back to it being a concept album. The first is the voice acting. Eleven of Fear’s fourteen songs begin with between five and thirty seconds of story in the form of voice acting. Talented musicians our singers may be, but these segments feel cheesy and forced, at best breaking the flow of the songs and at worst being an active distraction. The penultimate scene, in “The Ultimate Challenge,” introduces a new character who heroically sacrifices himself for our protagonist in a moment that could be moving were it not so jarring—or confusing.

The second is the length. With fourteen songs, Fear clocks in at sixty-six minutes, a mighty length that makes the back half feel tired. There just isn’t enough variety in the sound to justify so much music. Further, songs like “Stuck in a Cobweb” feel longer than they need to be, with interludes that slows down otherwise bombastic tracks to enunciate narrative lyrics. For the first half of Fear, I find I’m really enjoying myself, but after a while, the intricate keys start to sound the same, the exciting riffs blend together, and no matter when you check the runtime, there are still somehow five tracks to go. The back half isn’t bad by any stretch—”In a Flooding Room” and “The Cold of Dark” are a particularly effective duo—but it feels weighed down by itself. As it runs on, I notice that Antonio Durães’s bass and Bruno Ramos’s drums are too quiet to lift up “The Ultimate Challenge.” I get to “The Confrontation” and feel like I’ve heard its riff somewhere before. It’s a real shame, too—alone, the material is strong, but it feels like Glasya made decisions in service of their concept that bring the experience down.

There is a very strong 40-minute album in Fear. In fact, if it simply ended with “Rescue,” I think it would be a much better experience. That’s a hard thing to write—we love “less is more” at Angry Metal Guy, but I’m still sad to say that I could have given Glasya a higher score if there was just less of Fear. As is, I can only say that it is an improvement from Heaven’s Demise, that I will be coming back to some isolated tracks, and that I am still eager to hear what this band does next.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Scarlet Records
Websites: scarletrecords.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/GlasyaOfficial
Releases Worldwide: October 24th, 2025

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