EPICA — The Divine Conspiracy (review)

EPICA — The Divine Conspiracy album cover Album · 2007 · Symphonic Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
2/5 ·
topofsm
While this album does showcase a lovely voice from Simone Simons, other musical elements are pretty lacking. Riffs are straightforward. Midtempo is the norm. And while some songs are longer, with exception of the title track they maintain a standard, albeit extended, structure without developing into new movements or ideas.

The sound is what you'd expect from a standard symphonic metal band if you threw some Evanescence in as well. Therefore there are prevalent pop music elements all over the place. That being said, the orchestra added in with synthesizers from Coen Jannsen is much more prominent, to the point where much of it overpowers the guitars. As to be expected, other instruments aren't too heavy and rely on straightforward riffs.

While most of the songs are pretty uninteresting they do have the title track. "The Divine Conspiracy" is epic in the sense of composition and sound. Large choirs dominate the chorus and there is some wonderful mid-song instrumental interplay. The growls aren't terribly outstanding, but that has more to do with the album anyway. It is confusing as to why Epica would keep this album so unbalanced by making an album of mostly straightforward gothic symphonic metal songs while ending it on a bombastic 'epic' of sorts.

All in all, you are not going to find anything innovative on this album. There are much more 'epic' sounding symphonic metal albums out there, and Epica tries to be a bit too ambitious toward what they actually sound like. Within Temptation is poppier, but they don't necessarily try to be the most epic. Nightwish sounds epic, but they also have power metal elements to back it up. As for now, this album shows that the thing that Epica has going for them is Simone.
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