| Enter | 1997 |
| Mother Earth | 2001 |
It's hard to pin down the style of Within Temptation exactly - I guess if you have to label them, they're basically in the vein of gothic metal, with lyrics about lost love and other such dark subject matter, but there's also a symphonic element to their music as well, with layers of keyboards and orchestration as well (provided by René Merkelbach, technically not an actual band member, but a key important element in the music of Mother Earth nonetheless). Their debut album even had elements of death metal in the heavy guitars and 'cookie monster' vocals, though I'm not exactly sure why they're called that when those guys don't even sound anything like Cookie Monster! Tom Waits sounds like Cookie Monster, not whoever the hack was singing growling vocals on Enter, or the singers for bands like Opeth (sometimes). Anyway, beginning with Mother Earth, there was also folk and Celtic elements introduced into the mix, and that's when they began to come into their own style (more on that later).
Although the members of the band are definitely accomplished musicians (band founder and guitarist Robert Westerholt and keyboardist Martijn Spierenburg in particular stand out to me), the focal point of the band is most definitely Sharon den Adel, a quite hypnotizing and character-filled vocalist who always seems to bring a lot of personality and life to the songs. She's definitely one of the better female singers out there right now IMHO. Hmm... what else is there to say? Oh yeah... they've only released those two studio albums so far as well as some singles (the most celebrated being the one for their hit "Ice Queen") and EPs. I usually hate reviewing bands that have only released a small amount of material, because it's difficult to put into perspective what they can accomplish in the long run, and I definitely can say the same for Within Temptation. I guess that makes them a band very much worth following in the future.
Oh, and as I've mentioned on the Ayreon page, thanks again to Jean-Paul for sending me these albums. Maybe more people can follow that lead and send more stuff to me for review in the future. :)
--Nick Karn
Post your comments about Within Temptation
(reviewed by Nick Karn)
HIGH POINTS: Restless. LOW POINTS: Enter, Candles, Gatekeeper.
Okay, I might have mentioned in the introduction that Within Temptation aren't always an easy band to pin down in terms of style, but that's just not the case for Enter, a rather iffy debut if you ask me. The problem here is that the band concentrates totally on the bland 'take a slow generic guitar riff and add slow symphonic keyboards to it over death metal growling and occasional female vocals' formula that probably characterizes a lot of the bands in this genre. Ugh... why in the world the band would use the services of a crappy death metal vocalist when they already have a very talented singer among them is beyond me. Maybe to add more male personality to the mix? Or maybe they just had a case of Opeth disease where they want to tease their fans with their potential? Either way, this album ends up extremely monotonous due to the sound, and that they didn't really have their skills for melody and intricate atmosphere down yet.
As boring as the album is, though, it's not exactly horrible. There's a minor classic in the beautifully soaring opener "Restless" - no death metal grunts to be found, a gorgeous piano line, the listener's first taste of Sharon den Adel's considerable vocal talents, a lot of orchestrated power, and a breathtakingly sorrowful vocal melody ('you're the ghost... haunting through her heart...') Apparently, there exists a classical version of it as a bonus track on some editions of the album, and I'd love to hear how that turned out, since this song seems perfect for a rearrangement like that. There's another okay vocal melody on "Grace", where Sharon actually goes for a Kate Bush-style intonation for the first and not last time, and "Bloodied", while not exactly very good, is at least a tolerably paced instrumental, and it's also shorter than anything else on here, so that's a plus.
The rest of the album, though, is pretty much all interchangable crap to my ears. Moments of promise (fragments of good vocal melodies, decent introductory builds, etc.) are quickly drowned out by the symphonic/death metal boredom of the rest of the songs (and they're not exactly short, either). "Candles" and the title track both try to go for something epic, but fail miserably, since there's nothing remotely interesting or memorable going on in the songs other than the same old atmosphere, and while Sharon's sung parts do save the songs from being completely worthless, she doesn't display quite as much personality as later, and it's really hard even for superhuman vocalists to save stuff like this. Ooh, "Gatekeeper" even has both Sharon and the Cookie Monster death metal guy singing at once! What breathtaking majesty! God, I can't even believe how much better they'd get after this.
Post your comments / reviews for this album
(reviewed by Nick Karn)
HIGH POINTS: Mother Earth, Never-ending Story, Our Farewell, In Perfect Harmony. LOW POINTS: Dark Wings.
After a long gap in which the band members concentrated on their studies and things like that, they decided to go for some changes in their musical approach, with the most important one being wiping out the death metal elements in their sound, including the growling vocals. The band hasn't gone totally mellow of course, but I get the impression the heavier guitar work is mostly used to give extra power and majesty to the overall symphonic bombast on here. Plus, they're beginning to fit the music a lot more to the vocals than before, Sharon's vocals themselves are becoming much more personality-filled, not to mention fantastic keyboard arrangements are incorporated into the 'metal' background, the vocal melodies are tons more memorable and catchier, and... well, it's just a better album than Enter in just about every way possible. It also got them much deserved success overseas, though of course in the States, they're just another obscure 'gothic metal' band. Sigh.
The first three tracks here immediately wipe out thoughts of boring death metal from my head, though, and introduce a new Within Temptation sound. On the title track, things are based on sweeping orchestral majesty (just listen to the rich background nuances going on here!) blending in with a Celtic-based instrumental melody over the heavier grind of the guitars, and a great epic feel overall - those vocals on the 'until the end of tiiiiime... she gives and she takes...' refrain completely rule, and the rest of the song is, well, a moving tribute to Mother Earth (what else?). "Ice Queen" is more bombastic and radio friendly, with a rare appearance of an upbeat singalong melody, so of course it was the hit single (in certain areas of the world, anyway), and "Our Farewell" demonstrates just how much character is contained within those vocals to carry an otherwise sort of ordinary lost love piano/string ballad to great heights. Well, that and the beautiful melody too. Nice to see the band has learned how to actually come up with those.
It als helps that these improved melodies and arrangements actually help justify 7 minute lengths this time. "The Promiss" and "Deceiver Of Fools" probably do overstay their welcome a little, but are still very good - the extended soundtrack-ish intro in the former is built on with more of those exquisite keyboard, orchestral and choir arrangements, as well as vocals that aim for the stratosphere (the way the line 'I made a promise to revenge his soul in tiiime...' is sung in particular has such a great icy, hopeless quality to it), while the latter dramatically builds well for awhile between light romantic and dark symphonic sections to the fantasy-inspired lyrics of its' chorus. I also like the slightly less epic "Caged", probably the peak of the depressing side of romance these songs are meant to convey ('he told he loved me, but he laughed in my face'... 'I feel so cold inside, sorrow has frozen my mind') with a slow but chilling atmosphere. Plus, Sharon again pulls out those Kate Bush intonations here, and everything is arranged nicely.
Remember how I said René Merkelbach wasn't technically an actual band member, but an important factor in the music itself? Well, besides providing those keyboard and orchestral arrangements that are so critical to the success of the album, he also actually wrote two of the best songs on here - the ballads "Never-ending Story" and "In Perfect Harmony", beautiful songs that perfectly convey charming storybook fantasy (which this band is obviously a huge fan of) and the peacefulness of nature respectively. The former is probably the most instantly memorable and extremely melodic song on here, with an unforgivably catchy piano line and pop hook that grooves along convincingly, and the latter is pretty much a 6 minute epic built on acoustic guitar and orchestrated atmosphere that can instantly put one at peace with themself, both of them incredibly effective backgrounds for Sharon's vocals. She can sing very well! Though that might be the understatement of the decade to people who worship this album as one of the best of the year.
I'm not sure if I would go that far in ranking Mother Earth as an amazing album for 2001 (or of its' genre or whatever), though. It's very good stuff, with nice arrangements and vocals and all, though I get the feeling several of the actual songs would be very, very average without the benefit of those vocals and symphonic layerings, so it's probably more of a 'great on the surface, not so great underneath' album than anything else. Plus, I find "Dark Wings" leaves very little impression on me, if you're looking for specific weak tracks in my analysis of 'flaws'. But still, those strengths in presentation are flat-out undeniable, and lead to a few great songs, which is something Enter certainly didn't have. This album could also be a great setup to a potentially even better career ahead, which I definitely hope for.
Post your comments / reviews for this album
Index | Main band/artist reviews page