Tracklist: - Karma
- Monopoly on Truth
- Storm the Sorrow
- Delirium
- Internal Warfare
- Requiem for the Indifferent
- Anima
- Guilty Demeanor
- Deep Water Horizon
- Stay the Course
- Deter the Tyrant
- Avalanche
- Serenade of Self-Destruction
- Twin Flames (bonus track)
Another week, another Dutch band. But this time, the band is far from an undiscovered talent. Since bursting onto the metal scene around a decade ago, Epica have made giant strides towards the pinnacle of the symphonic metal genre. This is their third album in around five years, yet, due to perceived musical differences, it is the first of theirs I have properly listened through since their 2003 debut, The Phantom Agony.
While there’s already been a hatful of reviews, there’s still a number of things to talk about with this record. For a start, it’s big: fourteen songs (depending on which version you pick up), including a number a couple of numbers pushing towards the ten minute mark, and an overall playtime of nearly an hour and twenty minutes. Clearly, Epica weren’t going for short and sweet. What they were going for was a broad-ranging, conceptual soundscape, critiquing the direction of modern humanity with a mixture of concern and hope for the future, as Simone Simons revealed before the album’s release: "This title refers to the end of an era. Mankind can no longer stick their head in the sand for the things that are happening around us. We are facing many challenges."
This inspiration is the first particularly interesting thing about the album. It pulls the themes addressed in the album in two distinct direction. On the one hand, the lyrics reveal a sharp distrust of existing systems of power. In track 2, Monopoly on Truth, the powers that be are established as arrogant and untrustworthy, with the lyrics asking "Do we want to rely on the views/of the righteous ones who are all succeeding?" Track 5, Internal Warfare, meanwhile, seeks to reveal the aggression on which power structures are based, through a caricature of violence: "I'm a true believer/A soldier with a gun/I shall swipe the earth clean/Won't take long". Deter the Tyrant, which plays with similar ideas, features a lengthy sample of Colonel Gaddafi's demand to do just that, against revolutionaries seeking to topple his regime (this little tidbit features towards the end of the song, and translates roughly as "we will march in our millions, to purify Libya, inch by inch, house by house, corned by corner, person by person, until the country is clean of the dirt and impurities.") There is also a portrayal of mass corruption from the ruling elite, with track 6, the album's title track, warning that "With money segregating/The centres are degrading".
At the same time, this picture of chaos at the top leads to demands for change from the bottom (so to speak...). And the lyrics make a damning judgement of "the indifferent" who have "stuck their head in the sand", for not taking a stand against the injustice around them. This is clear in the title track, which admits "We've tried to look around and/search for ways to shift the blame". This seems to relate closely to the album cover, in which a bewildered subject, surrounded by the tools of the world's destruction, surveys a world she seems never before the have comprehended. Still, this album is not a self-righteous tirade against the unconscious masses who fail to recognise the state of oppression they exist within. As Simons has explained, this "end of an era" is as much "a possibility for a new beginning" as it is a requiem for the blundering fools which inhabit it. Tempering dissatisfaction with the popular mood is an expressed faith that change will come from popular will. Therefore, in Deter the Tyrant there is the acknowledgement that "Wild efforts to gag dissent/Will ever fail in the end".
The second interesting thing about the album relates to the musical style. In one sense, Epica have returned to the style they displayed in The Phantom Agony, in which the orchestral backing, although prominent, was stripped back and sparsely textured. It actually feels like a small chamber orchestra, with a handful of choir singers taking up backing vocals. And it’s possibly the best thing about the album. Without overbearing accompaniment, the threat of drowning the music under an avalanche of heavy strings and choirs is almost completely avoided. Instead, Epica are able to create clear, precise textures which are nonetheless diverse. This is evident from the band’s use of choral vocals, which are given the responsibility of belting out key lyrical lines. It’s a great effect that’s best illustrated by track 5, Internal Warfare. Here, the choir is divided by male and female section, which echo each others’ lines in haunting imitation. Elsewhere, in particular on the outstanding ballad, Delirium, a careful use of choral accompaniment creates a far more soothing, but no less striking, atmosphere.
This deliberate instrumentation also enables instruments to shine through with clarity and force, bringing a number of different sounds to the fore. Every sharp twist of the guitars and each slithering turn of strings clearly resonates. But perhaps the most satisfying sounds come from the keys, which are sophisticated and intricate. In track 3, the first single from the album, Storm the Sorrow, pianos play out each chorus in an intricate flutter. The piano is also used to trace out the seductive, weaving vocal melody line in the verses of Internal Warfare, while even in the relatively heavily-orchestrated Serenade of Self Destruction, space is made for pianos to come through in force.
Yet this record is not just a matter of simple themes. At the same time as reining their different instruments in, Epica have sought to diversify their musical themes, in an attempt to bring in prog elements. There’s key changes, alterations in tempo, and, above all, continuous changes between a large quantity of musical material. A shame. The combination of styles results a tension between the clear and simple and the complex and pretentious which is often crippling. Time and time again, it just feels like the band are not able to handle the demands they set themselves, as they rush to get through a vast quantity of material.
In itself, this vast body of music is unobjectionable: in fact, there’s some really good sounds. That’s very different to saying they make really good songs. While different ideas are neatly welded together in songs such as Monopoly of Knowledge, Storm the Sorrow, and Serenade of Self Destruction, elsewhere there is almost no effort to make a coherent transition from on theme to the next. Often, different ideas are so far off the wall that they destroy any musical cohesion the songs could lay claim to. Towards the end of Internal Warfare, the band therefore throw in a ten-second, blistering guitar solo before, mesmerised by their own ingenuity, following it up with roaring synths. Neither has anything to do with the tone of the rest of the song. Changes between musical themes often get even more frustrating. Track 11, Deter the Tyrant, wanders aimlessly between almost unrecognisably different melodies, rhythms, and key signatures. In Deep Water Horizon, two tracks earlier, the music repeatedly comes to a complete halt, before starting up once more with a totally unconnected theme. You can almost see the band exchange furtive glances, count a beat, and then nod themselves back in in unison.
Listen through to this record a couple of times, and you’ll soon discover the final interesting thing about it. Towards the end of track 5, Internal Warfare, the album, quite literally, disappears. As wave upon wave of flashy but basically absurd musical themes wash over the listener, it becomes almost impossible the distinguish each track, even each individual chorus, verse, and instrumental fill, from the next. Quickly assuming the bewildered look of the creature on the album cover, the unfortunate listener finally awakens towards the end of track 11, to the delightful tones of Muammar Gaddafi – just about the first thing in fully half an hour of music that stands out.
Ironically, the massive length of the album would have made it possible to completely dispense with all these middle tracks, without seriously affecting the final outcome. Even more ironically, the muddle in the middle doesn’t, itself, adversely affect the structure of the album. In fact, its overall structure is one of its best aspects. Starting with a rousing instrumental, before launching into a couple of hard-hitting and sophisticated flagship songs, the record moves on through a number of different moods and styles, all the time keeping a great overall balance between the fearsome and the ponderous (it’s all broken up nicely by the short instrumental track, Anima). As the penultimate song, Serenade of Self-Destruction, crashes to a glorious end, it makes way for a bonus track of genuine and touching beauty, the superbly orchestrated Twin Flames. (I should point out that the version of the album I’ve got features Twin Flames “soundtrack version”. Others, apparently, don’t. They have the “regular version”, which might be called “less good”.) And so, for all the fuss in between, an album which has real and noticeable strength only at the beginning and end is nonetheless greatly satisfying. Music can be strange, can’t it?
Overall, this is a difficult album to judge. It promises a lot, and in the end it somehow seems to deliver both great satisfaction and disappointment. The music is better than the songs, and the album is better than the music. In fact, there is a lot of genuine quality here, from sounds to individual songs. There are some fairly major problems, too, but if you ignore the utter absurdity of a gaping hole in the middle of the playtime, the album stands on its own feet. For an exile like me, returning the Epica after so many years away was a pretty enjoyable experience. And if you’ve not yet had a chance to listen, I’d suggest approaching this one with an open but critical mind.
Production: 3/5
Lyrics: 4/5
Album Cohesion: 5/5
Music: 7/10
Percentage Score: 76/100
No comments:
Post a Comment