Review Summary: A promising debut album, and though this will only please a select fan-base, the effort and ambition will not have gone unnoticed.
So this is what Cradle of Filth guitarist Paul Allender has been cooking up in his spare time? White Empress, an extreme symphonic metal group which seems to have spawned from out of the blue (or rather, black), also happens to have arguably one of the more underrated female metal vocalists of the last decade or so in its ranks. Mary Zimmer, the vocalist who contributed largely to the unfortunately short existence of The Ottoman Empire and Luna Mortis, is back in business as her ever-changing vocal delivery, whilst not always flawless, is joined by a mostly solid, consistent set of extreme metal rhythms and swathes of orchestral/synthesizer-laden background music to create one of the more promising extreme metal debut albums of 2014.
The main problem with White Empress is that if you're heading into the band's debut album,
Rise of the Empress, with a "I wonder how similar this is to Cradle of Filth" sensibility, any (un)pleasant surprises from the band's sound will be missed out completely. Indeed, it is better to approach White Empress' debut album with an open mind, given that some of the songs here really do offer something new. For the most part, Allender's driving guitar work collaborates with Zimmer's dark, somewhat operatic vocal delivery to create a more malevolent, aggressive sound which is largely unmarred when the keyboard-led compositions creep in. However, this is essentially both the debut album's strongest and weakest points, as songs like the powerful, majestic "Dethroned" and "Obsession with the Empress" easily surpass the sometimes mundane quality of "A Prisoner Unleashed" and "Erased and Rewritten". Perhaps it wasn't the band's intention to soak everything in swathes of industrial groove and overblown synth-laden melodies, but that's certainly what the end product has achieved, if nothing else. Fortunately, there are more positives than negatives to take from the strong musical formula which White Empress adheres to from start to finish, and you can hear the amount of effort and ambition which has gone into the album.
What really makes
Rise of the Empress more effective than one would initially have thought is Mary Zimmer's hard-to-ignore involvement into the production and progression of each song. Whilst her voice is evidently weaker on some songs than others, you can safely say that her sometimes raw-edged vocal delivery rarely fails to match the quality of the ever-menacing instrumentation. Songs such as "The Congregation", "Darkness Encroaching" and "Dethroned" all showcase here astounding ability to effortlessly change from a guttural roar to a soaring high, making the swift change from verse to chorus all the more natural. You can feel her power seeping through the recording, and although her vocals will prove divisive over the band's future fan-base, it would be hard to argue the case that she is an important aspect of White Empress. Zimmer even attempts a narrative style to bring out the concept of the supposed "Empress" to which the album's lyrical imagery adheres, and this is more than evident on one of the album's obvious highlights, "Dethroned", though it does perhaps cut the flow of the song's progression.
What Allender and co have set out to achieve here is obviously a sound, promising beginning to White Empress' hopefully long-running career. Utilizing the extreme, aggressive rhythm section against swathes of sometimes over-bearing orchestral sound and Zimmer's obviously polished vocal range has proven to be a bonus for a promising debut album, and though this will only please a select fan-base, the effort and ambition will not have gone unnoticed.
