Music Review for D’Manic – Crystal Ball

The backing track to this has a lot of heavy vibes, it’s big sounding and creates a fairly dramatic atmosphere, which in turn works well with the urgency that drives the lead vocal – particularly in the verses. The voice has a lot of angst and character within it, so in terms of the raw sound the artist has a lot of natural uniqueness to work with. The flow of the rap is good, there wasn’t a whole lot lyrically that I was drawn to or that grabbed my attention, apart from the Eminem line that appeared – an effective way to reach out to listeners, though it would maybe be a stronger track if after this point the artist added a little lyrical spark of his own to keep you locked in.

The Crystal Ball concept is pretty original in terms of titles and hooks of recent years, so as mentioned before – there is a lot of uniqueness in this that makes future tracks potentially quite powerful. The melody used in the hook was a little forgettable, the verses are much stronger and more enjoyable, but the track as a whole, as a piece of music, has a lot within it that works well – it sounds good, the distorted synth is quite strong and fresh, the production is fairly flawless, and the lead vocal has so much passion and character that really works in his favour and puts him ahead of a lot of the somewhat more generic voices that are out there. Towards the end the flow speeds up and shows some real potential on a skill level, perhaps if the vocal was compressed a little more effectively the lyrics would shine a little brighter at this point, the verse is definitely the place to really show off those skills and that personality.

By Rebecca Cullen