The (not so) magical world of symphonic gothic metal

Symphonic gothic metal has always been a love of mine, to the point where I would be obsessed with it and know pretty much every band in and around the genre. With age came less spare time and more need for variety and nowadays I regularly listen only to a select few, but I still throw an eye on the rest of them from time to time. And since Epica and Xandria battled for attention on the 2^nd of May and Macbeth decided to come out of whatever hole they were hiding in, I guess it’s time to pay close attention to this genre once more.

Epica, The quantum enigma

During that time, I used to be a great fan of Epica. Whenever people were complaining about how simplistic they are, I would defend them and say “yes, but they have nice choirs and nice orchestra and I enjoy them despite their lack of originality”. After staying away from them for a while, however, going back to this album painfully made me get the point those people were trying to make. In fact, it made me wonder what did I ever see in this band. Except for one lonely song, there is simply nothing good to clench onto, nothing to save it, and this is actually one of their most acclaimed albums, where they reached maturity, apparently. If this is maturity, I don’t want to go back to The phantom agony and see what I now have to say about that....

The first thing I notice is how thin the orchestra sounds compared to other symphonic bands. Everything is naked and limited, I have absolutely no idea how you can reach this level of emptiness while using choirs and orchestra and operatic vocals and contemporary vocals and grunts and the kitchen sink. They have so many elements thrown in there and yet they use them so badly... All songs sound exactly the same to my ears: zdrang zdrang, choir, zdrang, violins, zdrang zdrang, cheese (meaning vocals). There is no growth, no nuance, no change of pace (the drums play the same freaking rhythm all throughout the album, to the point where it annoys the hell out of me), no variety, no nothing. They use the choir and orchestra so blandly and so loudly and without any taste that all the colour that they were supposed to add is gone and is replaced by a whole lot of noise and repetition, and by the third track I’m wondering how am I going to put up with an hour of this. It doesn’t help that they suffer from the Sirenia-syndrome and the grunts and the guitar solos are added there without any connection with the rest of the song, just to come out ok when they draw the line or something. In fact, I think that after a whole minute without a loud choir they go “this cannot be, quick, another choir. Add some violins as well. What else should a good metal song have? Guitars? Yes, enter guitar solo. We want to be a heavy band, right? Quick, grunts!”. Ugh....

Speaking of grunts, Mark is a terrible vocalist, seriously. He may be hot, but that’s not saving him :P And still, I find myself wanting more grunts just to balance Simone’s excess of sugar. Seriously, if you could get diabetes just by listening to a person sing, Simone would certainly make me sick. She doesn’t have a bad voice, but she has certain limitations and the way the vocal line is created isn’t doing her any favours. Quite the opposite, it brings out just how thin and sweet her voice is, especially when you introduce it among all the noise of the choirs and orchestra. Her operatic voice isn’t that much better either, it doesn’t sound natural and she seems to be making a lot of effort to sing like that.

And the lyrics... oh the lyrics. Can you get anymore pompous and pretentious than that? Also, Mark’s preachiness is getting old. We get it, people suck. We suck. We should retrieve our balance, use our senses to observe, search for our essence, beware of the wolves that haunt us, don’t give in to ecstatic bliss, fight the monsters, live in the heart, experience the now... You know what *you* should do, Mark? Stop telling me to do shit!

The only positive thing I have to say about this album is related to Canvas of life. It starts with a beautiful piano theme, it adds an acoustic guitar, it’s soft and emotional, even Simone sounds nice and... and... could this be a chord change? And a change of rhythm? And a tastefully used choir? I can’t believe that a ballad is able to achieve everything that those songs with tons of instruments couldn’t: to have variety and evolution. It even comes full circle! Well done, Epica, well done.

Ok, enough appreciation for today because the title track, the wannabe masterpiece of the album, the essence of this era, their peak of creation comes along. It reminds me a bit of Therion and it starts slowly and quietly for once (ok, twice, if you count the ballad). Who would’ve thought that if you do that, you will have room to grow and it would actually mean anything when you go full mode with all those elements you so dearly love? Judging on the beginning, this actually seemed to have some potential, but nop, nothing here, move along. Other than a catchy chorus (repeated 91238439 times), there’s not much this song can brag with. And if you want to extrapolate, other than a pretty ballad, there’s not much this album can brag with.

Macbeth, Neo-gothic propaganda

Finally it’s out! I had almost abandoned hope of ever hearing this album. I shall ignore the cheesy clicheic title, because after seven years and countless postponements, I’m just happy I get to listen to it.

I like Macbeth. They may not be the most creative and complex band in the world, but they have something they can call their own. They sound like a mix of Lacuna Coil, the industrial era of Theatre of Tragedy and the gothic era of Tristania, I find them quite interesting. Both the lead singers have intriguing voices, with personality (the male voice is a bit weird, with all the Lurch-like slidings, but I enjoy it) and their music is very flowing and melodic. At times I’m a bit confused on what they’re trying to convey, because the lyrics are pretty depressed/ing, but the sound is very bouncy sometimes (usually the lyrics and the music should be a unitary whole, they don’t always achieve that). When they’re going for melancholic, though, they do it very well. 

I cannot abstain from comparing them to Epica, because they are so simple and honest and yet they are so much more effective. There’s more emotion (Opaque is very moving), more personality, better use of the guitar and bass, better use of the classical instruments, better interaction between the male and female singers (I love the way they pass the main melody from one to another), and above all, there’s more variety and actual growth. Yes, it’s a paradox. They aren’t trying hard to be special and complex and symphonic, they use their violins gently in the background, the keyboards are just there for emphasis and their intense moments actually touch me because I haven’t been hearing “intensity” since the beginning of the album to the point where it becomes just noise. They are the perfect proof that less really is more and their endearing simplicity is a slap in Epica’s pretentious face.

Xandria, Sacrificium

Cementing my opinion that bombastic epic intros are in trend no matter what genre you're part of, Xandria are off to prove their operatic symphonic era is here to stay for good. There are certain reminiscences of the old Xandria hidden in there (and that makes me happy because evolution and change are fine, but completely abandoning what used to define you are never ok in my book), but for the most part they're on the same track they started on with Neverworld's End. I don't know if it's the fact that I made peace with the idea that the old Xandria is gone or if they did it better this time around, but the songs sound more coherent and more memorable and the band seems to have reached a certain maturity. 

Diane van Giersbergen, the new lead singer, reminds me a lot Simone Simons, both when singing operatically and when doing contemporary vocals. She’s basically the better classically trained and less sugary version of Simone. Also, she does the transitions between the two styles effortlessly, which is something that Simone still hasn’t mastered. In fact, the whole album reminds me of Epica, they have the same song structures, they use orchestra and choirs similarly, we already established that Simone and Diane sound a lot alike... they even have the same repetitive drum rhythm sometimes. Still, overall they are a lot less irritating and repetitive and their songs flow better.

The similarities with other bands don’t stop at Epica, though. After being accused that they were trying to copy Nightwish with Neverworld’s End, they decided to cast away all doubt as to whether it’s copying or just a natural similarity (considering they are part of the same genre after all) and in Little red relish they managed to borrow not one, but two Nightwish elements – the Dead Gardens bass riff and the Come cover me intro. Just so it’s clear who their real idols are :P

Another thing I’m not very happy with is how interchangeable Sacrificium and Nightfall are. While listening to Nightfall I kept having that bugging impression that I had just heard that song and when I played the refrains back to back, I realised I wasn’t too far from the truth, as they are basically reverse versions of one another that make me want to scream “ok, we get it! You’re symphonic now and you have choirs and orchestra, anything else?”. I probably sound like I hate choirs and orchestras, but that’s not true. I absolutely adore them, I just hate bands that rely exclusively on them to create a bombastic sound and they don’t know when to stop and both Xandria and Epica suffer from the same disease.

This being said, Xandria definitely managed to outdo themselves with this album, as Betrayer makes me wonder where did this Xandria come from and why didn’t we get to relish in this earlier. Darker, more aggressive, bolder and more confident, with an obviously talented Diane that brings the best out of the metal + operatic vocals combination and better use of orchestra than the one I just complained about, Betrayer is by far one of the best songs of the album. But the one that steals the light and gains the “best song of the album and possibly the best of Xandria’s career” title is The undiscovered land. Oh Xandria, you know me so well! You know that if you give me Irish music I will love you forever! For how much I complained about lack of growth and overdoing things, The undiscovered land erases all my deceptions with a sponge. It starts out in such a gentle and heartfelt way (it reminds me a bit of Secret Garden during that first part) and then the evolution and intensity it finally reaches are so moving and there’s even a bridge that sounds straight out Salome. I love it! Now the next step is making a whole album at the same standard.