After Forever "Exordium" CD
[Transmission/The End]
This band comes from Holland and I've never heard of 'em before, but based on the overall appearance of things they sound pretty much like what I would expect: Atmospheric metal with female vocals and a little bit of an orchestral sort of tinge. The music is a bit heavier and darker than most of this stuff, which is cool, and they use their orchestral synths and stuff in a manner that I can tolerate. I like the singing, too. She's a little dramatic, but has a great voice, and really handles the delivery with taste, so I'm not bothered by it. In some ways she might be better suited for a style of music other than metal, I almost feel like this music restrains her a little bit. The rhythmic guitar chords and vocal patterns in portions of "Beneath" don't necessarily fit (though they are an interesting changeup), and I'm not really into the growling vocals in "Glorifying Means" at all, I think that cheapens the overall approach of the music a lot. Most of the riffing is moderately paced and sort of based around traditional metal, with a few chunkier rhythms or softer passages. The last two tracks are covers, Iron Maiden's "The Evil That Men Do" (musically true to the original but the vocal performance is lacking here) and Randy Crawford's "One Day I'll Fly Away" (I've not heard the original but this rendition is one of the strongest tracks on the EP). The recording's good. A little muddy, but good. I'd like to hear the distorted guitars get a little fuller (the clean guitars sound fucking excellent) to meet up with the vocals a little better, but the rhythm section sounds pretty good to me, and the keyboards aren't overpowering at all. The layout's alright. It could be worse. It's consistent, I just think the band photos are sort of goofy (they waste four pages on posed band photos) and the computerized bubble imagery or whatever, you know... who needs it? The booklet contains a brief note from the band regarding this EP and their forthcoming record, as well as all of the lyrics, which are nothing to write home about, but aren't so bad. The bonus DVD has a terrible music video with lots of horribly goofy visual effects and shit, plus weak "acting" and TV soap opera sort of film quality. There's a 12-minute behind the scenes making of the video deal, but none of the interviews are in English and it's mostly random footage backed by studio music. Then there are a couple of extra videos with live footage and studio audio, and some footage of the band recording in the studio. Nothing too interesting there. I think this band has a lot of promising elements swirling around on this EP, but they lose me with the big picture. It's inconsistent as far as the quality of the songwriting and the general approach to blending the aggressive with the melodic and calm. I'd be interested to hear more from them to see where they head, but I'm not really impressed by this offering. (5/10)
Running time - 26:39, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: Beneath, One Day I'll Fly Away]
The End Records - http://www.theendrecords.com

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