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Before The Heart of Everything came out I happened to read a review for it in a magazine. It said that it’s symphonic metal. Good, that's what I've come to expect from post The Dance Within Temptation. Then it also said that it brought mind to Celine Dion. Now that did have the warning bells of the mind going off. Well, it turns out that at times during this album the person who wrote that review was actually kind of right with that statement, but there really wasn’t anything to worry about. The Heart of Everything is a solid piece of metal, and certainly it was one of my album highlights from 2007.
Opening up the album is The Howling, a song that is much more influenced by gothic metal rather than symphonic, though not to the standard of their early releases, Enter and The Dance. It has vocalist Sharon den Adel singing in a much more rocky voice rather than her usual melodic, almost operatic tones. The guitar riffing is much heavier than those heard of their previously offering The Silent Force, and much louder in the mix. I found that with The Silent Force the guitars were mostly drowned out by the symphonic elements, and given how well the sound came out on those songs on their DVD's, I'll put that down to a botched production job. Luckily on The Heart of Everything both the metal instruments and the symphonies sit neatly together in the mix, and this album has a much better sound for it, but sadly their previous actually had the better songs overall. That is not say that this is an about without its own highlights but material wise it's slightly inferior to The Silent Force.
The second song features a duet between Sharon den Adel and Keith Caputo of Life of Agony. To be honest Keith doesn’t do Within Temptation any favours here and all they succeed in doing is creating a song that - at risk of repeating something said many many times - sounds like Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. The main difference here is that What have You Done is a much better effort. This is coming from someone who actually likes Evanescence, just for the record. Yes it does sound like alternative rock/metal but no matter what many metal fans may think of music like that, Within Temptation can pull it off. It’s just not as welcome here as their more familiar symphonic metal. It is a good thing that this is the only song here that can be described as such, otherwise this review might have an entirely different tone to it.
Two highlights of The Heart of Everything are Our Solemn Hour and the title track. The former features excerpts from a speech by Winston Churchill, a powerful vocal performance and a section that actually brings mind to progressive rock. It’s one of the few Within Temptation songs that has a guitar solo, something that the genre of symphonic metal often lacks and is a much welcome addition in this album for me. The title track on the other hand is a much more unique song for Within Temptation because Sharon den Adel sings part of the song in a much more raspy voice than normal. It also features some backing vocals that while relatively quiet sound quite evil. There’s another guitar solo here as well, and the chorus is catchy but at the same time this cannot be called a pop song.
But that does not mean that there is not one song that can be called pop. This is where the Celine Dion reference must have come from. The song is All I Need. It does actual feature distorted guitars but only marginally. This is chart material and I can actually imagine it being performed on the now defunct Top of the Pops TV show but no one said that I had to review this album just for its metal quality. This song is beautiful and showcases Sharon’s talent as a vocalist and as a music composer as the songs music was composed entirely by her. Not metal at all, but makes for a great variety in this stunning album. This is symphonic metal in any case, softer songs often go pretty much with the territory.
Elsewhere we have the piano led Hand of Sorrow which quickly erupts into an excellent and very heavy song. It splits between heavy metal riffs and the piano sections. Sharon den Adel is very operatic here and the song is one of their more poppy ones because of it’s chorus but while it may not appeal to extreme metal fans, anyone who’s into symphonic metal should lap this up. Easily an album and career highlight. The Cross is another such masterpiece, and Sharon’s sudden vocal shift from the pitch she maintains throughout to a much higher operatic voice is fantastic to listen to. If I hadn’t heard it done live I think that I may think that it could only be done in two takes. Mind-blowing stuff.
Of the four tracks that I have yet to mention - Frozen, Final Destination, The Truth Beneath the Rose and Forgiven - there still is no real low point as the quality of material produced in The Heart of everything is, while greatly varied, consistently strong. If I have to name a weakest track I have to say Frozen, but with an album this good it really is a tough one to call. Forgiven is actually the obviously choice since it’s the album’s entirely classical song but it’s beautiful like All I Need is and fits in well with this album.
And so in summary while this may not be Within Temptation's best album to date but its another extremely solid offering them, a good thing since they seem very slow in releasing albums. It’s not quite perfect but few things are. The songs are well crafted and played to perfection. The vocals are provided by one of metal’s best female singers and this is a band that has advanced and improved their overall sound considerably. Symphonic metal and AOR may not work on paper, in fact if any other band had done this it may not have worked at all. That’s how good this album and indeed this band is. The addition of more guitar solos in the music is also very welcome. It’s strengths make it’s few weaker moments seem inconsequential. I highly recommend this.
(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)