SIRENIA — The Enigma of Life (review)

SIRENIA — The Enigma of Life album cover

Album · 2011 · Gothic Metal

1.5/5 · 2011-02-04
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The Enigma of Life is the fifth full-length album by Norway’s Sirenia, and their first album release which features the same female vocalist as the last one (2009’s The 13th Floor) in the form of Spanish singer Ailyn, who was a contestant on El Factor X, Spain’s version of popular pop music reality show The X Factor. Fans of metal music no doubt have warning bells ringing in their heads now. A Metal album fronted by an X Factor style singer, surely not? Well yes, that’s the case alright, and it’s lasted for two albums now which is a record for this band, of which the only other core member on this album is main man Morten Veland. Funnily enough it’s only since Ailyn began singing for Sirenia that I’ve personally given them time of day, all prior material from them I’ve found exceptional boring, even the often hyped first two albums, and oddly for someone taking this music on from the perspective of a metal fan, this stuff was actually their least commercial music.

On that note, yes, like The 13th Floor before it, The Enigma of Life is a very commercially inclined gothic/symphonic metal album and as such it’s not a difficult listen at all. The vocals of Ailyn suit this style of music and she’s got a great voice, but Morten tries to bring a bit more extremity to it by adding some growls, and the trouble is his growls don’t come across as particularly strong, so it’s a good thing that most of the vocal is left to Ailyn.

Fans of this style should lap this album up, but I have to be honest, while The Enigma of Life is a pleasant enough a listen, to me it sounds like background music, and there’s no real moments where it gets symphonic enough to come across as epic in a classical sense, what with Sirenia being more rooted in gothic metal. Likewise there are no moments where the music really packs a punch in terms of heaviness, or even any really catchy and memorable songs that I’d feel inclined to play because I actually really enjoy them, which is something The 13th Floor did have in the form of The Path to Decay. Here nothing really stands out on the main album, which makes it extremely difficult to single any track out as any sort of a highlight.

Another problem that I have with it is that no progress seems to really have been made from The 13th Floor. The Enigma of Life overall just comes across as The 13th Floor Part II really, which overall makes it sound pretty stale because overall the quality of the songs isn’t up the standard set by that album, which wasn’t overly high to begin with. Maybe the previous four albums had the advantage of a new female vocalist each time that the vocal delivery as good as got a revamp with each album, but since Ailyn’s vocals were the reason I started to pay attention to Sirenia, and I would consider her the best singer they ever had, and coupled with what good ideas The 13th Floor had, I was hoping that with The Enigma of Life Sirenia would really hit their stride and deliver a great (if still commercial) album this time around. No such luck.

Some versions have bonus tracks, one of which was a track sung in Spanish, Oscura Realidad (actually this is the same song as an earlier song called This Darkness, just translated). I actually really enjoyed this song because it was different for the band, and that brings me to another major problem with the album, the one stand-out track is considered to be bonus material and as such, isn’t a part of the material I base my rating on.