arcane-beautiful Within Temptation are a band I see as a bit of a guilty pleasure. I admit that albums like “Mother Earth” and “The Silent Force” are pretty much modern metal classics, but their more recent albums did have me wondering about the direction these guys are going in. The bands last album “The Unforgiven” was a mad concept album full of pretty interesting compositions, but at times songs that wouldn't go amiss on Eurovision. So on this album, the band have decided to kind of do something a little different.

Sound wise, the band have named their album “Hydra” in order to describe the multiple styles and genres that the band have covered over their long spanning career. So expect flourishes of older stuff emerging, including gruntal vocals and newer influences. The best way I can describe this album is that it is rather cheesy. But a good type of cheese. It belongs to a genre of music that I like to call fist (a genre made for putting your fist in the air and shaking it...like a polaroid picture).

For the past few years the band seemed to have gained a weird fetish for covering up to date pop songs. Now don't get me wrong, I do like a good metal cover of a pop song now and then, but there is a certain moment whenever hobby becomes obsession. So, surprise surprise there is a bonus disc on the special edition of this album containing a few covers. Now it is obvious that this new found hobby has influenced their sound. At the moment I'm saying it's a positive thing, but familiarity can breed contempt...

The opening track “Let It Burn” has to be one of their best songs in a long time. Powerful and anthemic, it is a perfect opening to the album with some pretty impressive vocals from Sharon.

The album's first single “Dangerous” is definitely a highlight on the album. Featuring vocals from Howard Jones (ex Killswitch Engage), the song is heightened by the combination of powerful male and female vocals. A killer riff throughout and pretty damn catchy too.

One of the album's most controversial moments on the album has to be found on the track “And I Run.” Mixing metal and rap with the help of Xzibit, the song is actually very enjoyable and flows very well with the mixture of 2 styles. To all the 'haters' of this song, don't fret, this has been done before.

The album's second single “Paradise (What About Us)” is another mammoth pop tune, showing off the bands original symphonic style with the help from Tarja (ex Nightwish) on guest vocals. Pretty catchy chorus and some pretty powerful vocals, the song is another powerful pop tune.

One of my persona favourite tracks on the album has to be “Silver Moonlight.” Taking a rather Celtic sounding musical approach and mixing grunts which haven't been heard since their first album, it really is something different for these guys, and a good little departure from the tone of the rest of the album.

One song that I really disliked on this album was “Dog Days.” Very repetitive, very annoying and pretty much a filler generic moment. Luckily this is the only real weak moment on the album.

The album's closing track “Whole World Is Watching” is cheesy as hell...but pretty damn great. Featuring guest vocals from Dave Pirner from from Soul Asylum, this song could easily be a Bon Jovi ballad.. But...Within Temptation bring this song to brilliant cheesy justice.

In conclusion, I have to say that I surprisingly really enjoyed this album. I do admit that the band's change to a more poppier sound does have their songs sounding rather cheesy, but I am a fan of the cheese now and then. For metal purists, this may be a bit too poppy for your liking, but for people like me who dreamed to have been born in the 80's, this is pretty much greatness for me.

8/10

adg211288 Hydra (2014) is the sixth full-length studio album by Dutch symphonic metal act Within Temptation. It was preceded by the EP Paradise (What About Us?) (2013) which presented its title track (which featured Tarja Turunen) as Hydra's lead single while also including three demo versions of songs that appear on Hydra. Hydra sees Within Temptation exploring various collaborations, and as well as Tarja they've been joined by former Killswitch Engage vocalist Howard Jones, Dave Pirner of the alternative rock band Soul Asylum, and rapper Xzibit.

Yes, a symphonic metal band collaborated with a rapper. On paper this is a recipe for disaster, regardless on your feelings about rap vocals. It might be all well and good for angst driven nu/alternative metal acts but for symphonic metal? Well believe it or not, and I'm covering the track in question, And We Run, first to prevent it becoming an elephant in the room, Within Temptation and Xzibit (who co-wrote the song) made a pretty good track here. Xzibit's rap doesn't even sound particularly out of place. Since I'm not a fan of rap vocals myself I can't say I really wanted to hear a rapper on a Within Temptation album of all things, but I appreciate this track in ways I never would have expected to in a million years. Perhaps if rap music itself was symphonic I'd even like it.

Okay, let's not go there and instead talk about the rest of Hydra. Since you know, there's nine other tracks here that don't feature any rapping at all.

Hydra is definitely mostly representative of how you'd expect a Within Temptation release to sound following an album like The Unforgiving (2011), which was unashamedly pop based. Pop metal is definitely a thing of current times and yeah, that's certainly going to rub a certain type of metalhead up the wrong way, but guess what? Pop metal is still hell of lot more interesting than that pure pop music you can hear on mainstream radio and Within Temptation are field leaders in the style; catchy songs, heavy riffs, guitar solos, epic orchestrations, and beautiful vocals from Sharon den Adel. The Unforgiving was their best album to date even. It still is if I'm honest. Hydra is still a high quality work, but it does come over as a step down compared to The Unforgiving.

The album does however bring back an element to a couple of songs that has been missing from Within Temptation's music since The Dance (1998) EP: growling. Again performed by guitarist Robert Westerholt, the growls are mostly heard within Silver Moonlight, which was one of the songs in demo form on the Paradise EP, but they're also heard in Tell Me Why. So while Hydra may continue to embrace pop, it does also show that Within Temptation haven't forgotten their early days entirely, although I'm not sure we're going to be hearing the gothic metal or death-doom of debut album Enter (1997) from them again anytime soon. Combined with Xzibit's rap and clean male vocals from both Howard Jones and Dave Pirner, what we do have here in Hydra is essentially one of the more varied Within Temptation releases.

I'm not really sure that Within Temptation needed four duets on the album, but two of them are easily highlights. Paradise (What About Us?), the title track from the prior EP and featuring Tarja Turunen is of course one of them, as Tarja is no doubt the most natural of the four collaborations for Within Temptation; she also produces symphonic metal, first with Nightwish and then as a solo artist. She and Sharon den Adel sound great together. I'm really not sure how any symphonic metal fan can say no to that. The other collaboration I really like is Dangerous, with Howard Jones. He sticks to his clean singing and I always thought he was one of the best metalcore singers, so I was actually excited by this collaboration to begin with and the results aren't a letdown in any way. The song itself is a fast paced one, shades of power metal in the riffs even, and insanely catchy.

What keeps my overall regard for Hydra a bit lower than Within Temptation's best work though, is not the rap during And We Run, but that a couple of other songs don't really stand out as well as they could have down. The final collaboration is the closing track, Whole World is Watching, with Dave Pirner (or if you own a Polish version, it's a singer called Piotr Rogucki instead, for some strange reason). It's a ballad type and seems a bit anti-climatic if I'm honest. It's driven primarily by acoustic guitar rather than the usual symphonic ballad Within Temptation does and while I haven't heard what Pirner's band Soul Asylum sounds like, I do know they're considered alternative rock, and that's really what this song sounds like. Other songs such as Covered by Roses don't captivate me the way their best work does. Dog Days is a good song but it does have an irritating lyric that goes: "one two three four what are you waiting for?". Obviously for me speaking personally And We Run could never be a favourite, but it's definitely not the weakest song here.

A step down from The Unforgiving it may be, but I'm impressed with the way Within Temptation continually make the effort to explore new ground, even when some of the things they do might further alienate fans of their older work. They still manage to put out a high quality symphonic metal album to my ears though and a four star rating is easily deserved.

Gallifrey “It’s a Crossover Hit!”

I’ll never understand the fanaticism that female-fronted symphonic metal gains. For those who aren’t aware of these obsessive fans, I dare you to search the name of any symphonic metal vocalist on facebook. Cue hordes of pages and fanpages and “come to brazil” pages and pages with sexually questionable fan art/slash fiction of these people. Some are fan pages, some legitimately pretend to be members of the band and all of them are incredibly strange considering the music they are fanatic over. They all appear to be teenage girls, too. It’s as if it’s not cool to idolize Justin Bieber, so Simone Simons and Sharon den Adel get it instead, to the same near-obsessious level.

Within Temptation have always had the possibility of being more than just a metal band. I mean, they have catchy melodies, they have a gorgeous singer, they have a celebrity power couple within the band and they have legions of obsessed fans. They’re just one step away from being mainstream. And on their last album, The Unforgiving, they really pushed it. It was a pop album through and through, with hooks and catchy riffs and accessible production, it just had strings and some distorted power chords thrown in to make it symphonic metal again. And actually, I loved The Unforgiving. It was insanely catchy, fun music, and I really think anyone who hated it needs to give themselves a decent look in the mirror and decide whether they’re really a fun person to be around.

But it wasn’t just me who was impressed by that album. My sister, who was 8 at the time of its release, also somehow happened to get hold of it, by my complete mistake of showing her, and having to suffer through months of a small child singing the same songs just to impress you is bloody annoying. But the point is that my sister, who thinks Lady Gaga is the best thing in the universe, loved The Unforgiving. And with radio play coming for “Faster” and “Sinead” (the latter of which I even saw the music video for on a TV in a Burger King, to one of my friends saying “she’s pretty hot”), Within Temptation could practically smell worldwide fandom and fame. All they needed to do was to follow with an even more accessible record…

The first thing you’re going to notice about Hydra are those horrible words “feat Xzibit”, followed by a gasp and “Oh jesus christ they’ve done it, haven’t they”. And yes, I would definitely expect to hear “And We Run” pouring out of radios with tweens singing it at the top of their lungs, and I honestly think the reason it hasn’t been picked for lead single is that it would cause an outrage amongst fans. But honestly, I hope I’m not the only one here who thinks it’s one of the more solid songs on the record, if not the best. It’s epic and grandiose, with a high and glorious chorus covered with a lovely little synth/string hook and pounding drums. And as much as I know that Xzibit is only here for money, promotion and recognisability purposes, I honestly think his contribution is fitting for the song. He raps in an epic and uplifting tone, even if his lyrics are pretty weak, and I do enjoy the flow he has for the bridge, jumping the bars and putting in a couple of nice rhythmic plays in there. I would honestly listen to a whole record of rapping over this sort of instrumentation, so I can’t complain about his feature here, although people certainly will.

But the big question should be – have Within Temptation completely sold out and gone towards pop music? And honestly, no, they haven’t. Sure, this is a lot closer than The Unforgiving, and there are certainly some tracks here that wouldn’t sound out of place on pop radio, particularly “And We Run” and “Roses”, but there’s still a hell of a lot of metal here that’s getting in the way of them rivaling Lady Gaga. There are even some rare harsh vocals from them during "Silver Moonlight", which easily has one of the catchier choruses here. In a way, I respect WT for keeping this element of their music, proving they’re not in this for the money, but in another way, I always love it when a band with pop tendencies that is also a good band compositionally gets the credit and popularity they deserve.

Another track that I should touch on is the lead single here, “Paradise” featuring Tarja Turunen, formerly of Nightwish, but as much as I enjoy the main part of “Paradise”, I can’t help but this that Tarja here is even more of a money grab than having Xzibit on “And We Run”. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, these vocalists have a massive following, and having Tarja as a feature is far more exciting to this group of people that Xzibit, although I can’t really say I enjoy her part at all. I’ve never been a fan of Tarja’s operatic take on symphonic metal, I’ve always felt that vocalists like Simone Simons, who can take both opera and pop singing, were so much better, and Tarja’s operatic warble over the bridge and chorus just comes across as corny and unnecessary, far more so than the rap in the previous track.

Hydra honestly just feels like a slightly more accessible version of The Unforgiving, but it most certainly won’t get Within Temptation the worldwide fame they’re capable of, simply because this just isn’t as strong. The bigger tracks on here can’t really rival the majority of The Unforgiving, there are no hooks as good as the ones on “Sinead” or “Shot In The Dark” or tracks as big and exciting as “Fire and Ice” or “Iron”. Hydra is a nice record, and aside from a couple of moments, spoiler: click to read there’s nothing actually bad about this album, but it just doesn’t push the exciting and uplifting symphonic pop metal of its predecessor as well.

7.1

Originally written for my Facebook page/blog: www.facebook.com/neoprogisbestprog