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Epica Album Review
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Band Name: Epica
Album Name: Consign To Oblivion Rating: 2 / 5 User Rating: 0 / 5 Label: Transmission Records Buy Album: Amazon.com Rate Album: Rate |
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Tracklist 1. Hunab K'u (A New Age Dawns) [Prologue] 2. Dance of Fate 3. Last Crusade 9A New Age Dawns #1) 4. Solitary Ground 5. Blank Infinity 6. Force of the Shore 7. Quietus 8. Mother of Light (A New Age Dawns #2) 9. Trois Vierges 10. Another Me "In Lack'ech" 11. Consign to Oblivion (A New Age Dawns #3) |
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In the past, Epica have always been a hit-or-miss band, and nothing's changed on 'Consign to Oblivion.' Their style, a mixture of orchestral and gothic elements, sounds very overdone. Other bands have been able to pull off this mixture successfully, but a lot of Epica's material seems forced. Frontwoman Simone Simons has a beautiful voice, but the band's music just doesn't always do it justice. The guitars are usually pretty boring, and the keyboard arrangements are often too excessive. Mark Jansen's aggressive vocals, which make appearances in a few songs, seem rather out of place. Despite several boring and uninspired-sounding songs, 'Consign to Oblivion' does contain a few gems, in particular 'Black Infinity.' This track manages to smoothly blend the music with Simone's voice, and transition between slower and faster sections without sounding choppy. In addition, 'Trois Vierges' is sung as a duet with guest vocals from Kamelot's Roy Khan. Just like on the Kamelot song 'The Haunting,' Simons and Khan make a brilliant match. Their voices sound as if they were made for each other, and the results on this track are astounding. Epica really don't do anything else impressive on this album, and it's quite a shame. With such a capable frontwoman and talented musicians (despite the fact that they don't play anything interesting, they do display a decent amount of skill) one would think the overall results would be positive. Maybe they need to take a new approach to writing their songs, or make some other sort of alteration to remove the blandness from their material. To date, Simons' two best vocal performances to date have both been duets with Roy Khan, who seems to bring out the best in her. Fans of this style might want to check that song out, but 'Cosign to Oblivion' doesn't have much going for it. Review by: Andrew Read Member Reviews |
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