As my colleague Simon Bray recently said when reviewing the new Epica album, 'The Divine Conspiracy', there’s a lot of it about -  female front goth metal that is!

However when I say female fronted, Ivory Moon in fact use the vocals of Cecilia Serra more in a supporting role than as a leading lady. The band are clearly a co male/female fronted band and in the main it’s the vocals of Sandro Manicone that feature predominantly on the bulk of the material, with Serra providing an excellent counterpoint to Manicone’s more straight ahead metal tones. Indeed rather like former Nightwish frontwoman Tarja Turunen, Serra's voices is very operatic in nature at times thus bringing the Finnish band to mind when looking for musical comparisons to make. However the band also draw on more than one source for inspiration and over the course of the eleven tracks on offer here one can here the influence of the likes of  Angra, Symphony X, Iron Maiden and Dream Theater amongst others.

On a musical level the level of playing by the five band members responsible is virtually faultlessly, however at times the actual quality of the songs varies considerably. The second half of the album, in the main, overshadowing the first five tracks on the CD. Perhaps a re-jigged running order would have helped the album no end and brought more continuity to proceedings.

Epic tracks like the Christian inspired Golgota, the stunning Phantom Ship and the equally excellent Overflow (were have I heard that main melody before) stand head and shoulders above the earlier songs on the album, however as a whole Human Nature is definitely an entertaining outing, if a little derivative of the genre at times. Where the songs do perhaps fail a little it's the unique vocal interplay between Serra & Manicone that makes this band stand out from the crowd, two excellent singers who actually sing.