Review Summary: Lightweight and unimpressive, but grows on you.
It is no secret that Within Temptation has been trying hard to break into the international mainstream and on this album they seem especially intent on doing so. Gone are the elaborate symphonic compositions that suffused
The Heart of Everything. What we have here is a more stripped-down and immediate sound, with a bit more focus on the individual band members, with more riffs, rather than an orchestra, driving the songs.
In the Middle of the Night is particularly rocking, propelled by a considerably heavy rhythm and a big chorus. There are several welcome solos, particularly of interest being those on
Shot in the Dark,
A Demon's Fate and
Iron, showing that the band is capable of playing their instruments and do not shirk duty by hiding themselves behind a symphonic orchestra while strumming generic, almost inaudible rhythms, like they've done before.
The huge choruses are still here but they somehow lack that luxurious bombast of those of the previous release and have a more poppy feel. The one exception is
Fire and Ice which is perhaps the most classic sounding WT piece here, and for that reason possibly the album's best song.
Lyrically, genericness prevails -- Lots of things "on fire" - souls, hopes, pants; lots of "fading away" (I swear, the phrase gets mentioned in almost every song). But it doesn't matter, as the catchiness factor is high enough so that you find yourself singing along to quite a lot of the songs, so it's all good in the end.
Overall, I find this album to be a bit too much on the radio-friendly side, and thus distasteful at first. But thanks to a high degree of consistency across its eleven songs, it's eventually worthwhile.
Recommended:
- Fire and Ice
- Sinead
- In the Middle of the Night
- Shot in the Dark
- Stairway to the Skies
