Epica: The Divine Conspiracy

Artist: Epica (Official Band Website)
Album: The Divine Conspiracy
Released: September 7, 2007
Genre: Symphonic Metal





Track Listing:

1. "Indigo ~ prologue" - 2:05
2. "The Obsessive Devotion" - 7:13
3. "Menace of Vanity" - 4:13
4. "Chasing the Dragon" - 7:40
5. "Never Enough" - 4:47
6. "La‘petach Chatat Rovetz ~ the Final Embrace" - 1:46
7. "Death of a Dream ~ the Embrace that Smothers part VII" - 6:03
8. "Living a Lie ~ the Embrace that Smothers part VIII" - 4:56
9. "Fools of Damnation ~ the Embrace that Smothers part IX" - 8:42
10. "Beyond Belief" - 5:25
11. "Safeguard to Paradise" - 3:46
12. "Sancta Terra" - 4:57
13. "The Divine Conspiracy" - 13:56
14. "Higher High" (Bonus Track) - 5:27
15. "Replica" (Fear Factory Cover) (Bonus Track) - 4:10

Grading: (Niche Weighted)
Listenability: A
Relistenability: A
Listening Experience: A
Variation: B+
Overall: A (HIGHLY Recommended*)

Let me start off by just saying, wow. Just wow. Epica is one of those bands that I don't stumble across very often, they're the type of band that just completely suck me in with each and every track they produce. Now, an important thing to note here, (hence the asterisk next to the Recommended above) the genre of symphonic metal is a little bit of a niche genre. Niche being that it may not reach every musical taste, but the level of development that Epica has within their tracks might just have the ability to bring people in.

I am seriously convinced that Simone Simons is one of the most incredible female vocalists, regardless of what genre you're looking at. Being symphonic metal she has the sort of operatic vocals with an incredible tone and timbre that can only be attained I think from years of vocal training (according to her Wikipedia entry she started doing classical vocal training at the age of 15 and she is now 23). What really separates Simone Simons vocals in my ears is the amount of pitch control that she has, also she doesn't go into the ear splitting glass shattering high end soprano notes which makes for an overall more pleaseant listening experience. What I mean by pitch control, is while she is singing you get the feeling that you could straighten picture frames with how completely center-line her pitch stays as she is singing any particular note (excluding vibrato of course).

One thing to note here is the vocals are not all done by Simone Simons on the track, along with sort of background vocal singers in certain places, there is the contrasting vocals of Mark Jansen who also provides some guitar work. A style thing associated with Epica is the fact that Mark Jansen's vocals consist of growled vocals, anyone who is familiar with the metal genre will probably know exactly what I mean by growled vocals. A defining style theme Epica has throughout their tracks is the contrasting vocals (which primarily consist of Simone Simons incredibly beautiful soprano vocals), but include portions of contrasting growl vocals from Mark Jansen which have a bit more of a rough and unrefined nature to them. I think this is one of the few points about Epica that may turn some people off since some people find growl/grunt/scream vocals very disagreeable with their personal music taste. However, I think the two styles clash nicely, and if you are one of those music listeners that feel like you will get turned off by the harsh grunt vocals I just want to point out that the majority of the vocal work is dominated by Simone Simons, and not by Mark Jansen. Most of the Mark Jansen vocals come in limited quanities and come in as at the more counterpoint vocal portions of the various songs.

The instrumentation arrangements of the tracks are also quite outstanding on this album (and in all of Epica's albums). Being "symphonic" metal there is of course the infusion of orchestral and band instruments, but there seems to have been a lot of attention paid to these tracks. I've heard a number of other "symphonic" metal bands that also had the infused orchestral/band instrumentation but they sometimes seemed lacking. Perhaps one thing that differs, is some bands opt more for computer generated instrumentation, but Epica at their formation also put together a choir (made up of two men and four women) and a string orchestra (three violins, two violas, two cellos and an upright bass). Not that I personally have a problem with computer generated instrumentation, but I think there's a certain quality that can't be generated by a computer, the human factor I think really makes a big difference.

As for tracks that really grabbed me on this particular album, The Obsessive Devotion, Chasing the Dragon, Never Enough, Death of a Dream ~ The Embrace That Smothers Part VII, Living a Lie ~ The Embrace That Smothers Part VIII, Beyond Belief, and The Divine Conspiracy all really jump out at me. This is DEFINITELY not to say that the other tracks aren't absolutely incredible as well, but these in particular really grab me (and yes I realize that's half of the tracks ;) ).

I should also point out that this is the fourth studio album released by Epica (first album being The Phantom Agony, second being Cosign to Oblivion, and third being The Score: An Epic Journey (which consists a fair amount of instrumental tracks)), and they have one of those discographies (for me) that I can seriously listen to EVERY single track and love every minute of it. I hate to hype it up so much, but Epica is seriously something substantial.

So although this happens to be a little bit of a niche genre, I think even somebody outside of the niche could still be drawn in by this band and this album. Another interesting thing to point out is I don't believe there are any foul lyrics within any of their albums (if that is of concern to you), I know when a lot of people see "metal" they immediately see that scary black sticker:

As far as I can tell (to be fair I haven't studied the precise lyrics of each and every song, but I can assure you the tracks are absent of any blatant obscenity) Epica has pretty clean lyrics.

So if you have the opportunity I definitely recommend picking up this album (or at least a few tracks off iTunes or whatever other fancy things you kids are using these days with your musics.

New Grading System

So as I tend to get ahead of myself I pointed out in my most recent review that I've created a new rating system for the albums. The system will (for now) consist of five basic categorical grades: listenability, relistenability, listening experience, variation, and overall grade. Is this obscure? Well.. it's not meant to be obscure but I'll lay out precisely what I mean here in this post.

Listenability

Yes, listenability is in fact a word:

Listenability (Noun): Being such that listening is pleasurable lis'ten·a·bil'i·ty n.

Yes, listenability is exactly what it sounds like, as many of the older generation might encounter when listen to the "new fangled banging on pots and pans music" that they're offspring enjoy so much, listenability is a very subjective thing (keep that in mind). I try to review in terms of very general listenability, there tend to be certain elements of bands that are just horrendous to listen to (i.e. for me high pitched screaming, poor studio equalizer work (the high end needs to be brought in guys..)) It's probably unlikely that the listenability grade will really vary much from each of my reviews (Disclaimer: I only tend to review albums I would actually recommend, I don't review just anything unless requested). So how well.. easy is it to listen to it? That's what listenability is.. basically.. I know it might seem a little obscure, but I hope you understand. (:

Relistenability

Now this is not particularly a word (at least it's not in the dictionary) I just prefixified it (the meaning should be obvious). I'm truly a believer that some albums exponentially decrease in listening pleasure the more times you listen to it. Relistenability attempts to gauge the "play it again" factor with various albums, that is will you enjoy listening to it the 100th time you play it, or just the first few times? Relistenability is exactly what that is all about.

Listening Experience

Once again we delve into the more obscure and subjective arenas of my rating system. I do hope you'll forgive me I'm a very obscure guy (: Listening experience has a lot to do with the overall "feel" of the album. Am I sitting there thinking about what I should make for dinner that night? Am I feeling like this album really makes me want to jam a pencil into my brain? Or does the music allow my mind to kind of clear and focus in on the sounds providing a more relaxing or exciting or insert emotion here feeling? If it does allow me to focus into the album, then the listening experience is good, if I'm able to almost completely ignore the music the listening experience might not be very high.. (or you have some awesome tuning out skills) Did I listening to the album? Did I feel like I was forcing myself to listen to the album? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself when attempting to place a listening experience rating on the album.

Variation

Once again, I hope this is fairly straight forward for you. Variation deals more with "Do the tracks all sound the same?" than anything else, when I'm providing a rating. Some bands suffer from cloneitis when they are writing tracks. Each track sounds almost the same as all the other tracks, how much did they mix it up? That's what I attempt to gauge in variation. Now keep in mind most bands exhibit a certain "style" variation is not gauging this I would include a complete explanation at the beginning of the album review if the band had changed its core style. I speak more of interalbum variation. How much do the tracks sound alike? Could I tell one track from another one? That's what variation attempts to gauge.

Overall

Okay, this really should be the least obscure one of them all. (: This is merely a culmination of all the rating things (expressed here and ones that I haven't expressed) put together into one averaged grade. Keep in mind there are no mathematical calculations taking place with the overall grade. I do not precisely average the gradings of the other categories, this is just a one shot take everything into account, lay all the cards on the table, kind of grading thing. It takes into account not only the grading categories I have expounded on here, but more obscure grading critera that flow in my disorganized brain.

So, I hope this has been educational for you, I don't mean to be obscure, but it's hard for me to put things so simply when rating music. I just want to give you as verbose a rating as I can when grading something as a new music album. I love music, and I hope I can point you to some new stuff. Cheers.

Flogging Molly: Float

Artist: Flogging Molly (Official Band Website)
Album: Float
Released: March 4th, 2008
Genre: Celtic Rock/Celtic Punk





Track Listing:

1. "Requiem for a Dying Song" - 3:30
2. "(No More) Paddy's Lament" - 3:24
3. "Float" - 4:53
4. "You Won't Make a Fool Out of Me" - 2:43
5. "The Lightning Storm" - 3:29
6. "Punch Drunk Grinning Soul" - 4:20 (At the end features a 30-second performance by Tom Corrigan called "Rural Decay")
7. "Us of Lesser Gods" - 3:19
8. "Between a Man and a Woman" - 3:21
9. "From The Back of a Broken Dream" - 3:21
10. "Man With No Country" - 3:04
11. "The Story So Far" - 4:11

Grading: (Note new grading system)
Listenability: B+
Relistenability: B+
Listening Experience: A-
Variation: B-
Overall: B+ (Recommended)

First, let me start this post by notating that I've adjusted my rating system to a more arbitrary and confusing one. (: I'll be posting a guide to my new grading system, but keep in mind I'm trying to make it as obvious as possible. I've always found it difficult to rate an entire album with one number or even one grade letter. So I'm breaking it down into other categories (which aren't meant to be obscure) in attempt to allow people a better understanding of the various strengths and weaknesses of an album.

So, here we are at Flogging Molly, after a waiting period of four years they have released their fourth studio album. I want to start out by saying that this new album is fairly standard Flogging Molly fair. That is, if you're a fan of Flogging Molly, you will not be disappointed by this album, and if you're not it's as good an album to start liking Flogging Molly with (or not).

In case you aren't familiar with "Celtic Rock" or "Celtic Rock" (As a friend of mine calls it "Paddy Rock"), it's basically a mix of punk rock with a bit of Celtic (i.e. instruments) flavour to it. Just look at this band member breakdown (with instruments, note: I've included Wikipedia links to some of the lesser known instruments)

* Dave King – lead vocals, acoustic guitar, bodhrán, banjo, spoons
* Bridget Regan – fiddle, tin whistle, uillean pipes, vocals
* Dennis Casey – guitar, vocals
* Matt Hensley – accordion, concertina
* Nathen Maxwell – bass guitar, vocals
* Bob Schmidt – mandolin, banjo
* George Schwindt – drums, percussion

Flogging Molly succeeds once again to provide me with a very pleasant listening experience, each song flows very nicely, and while the only downfall I really found is the variation is lacking just a little bit (hence the B-). Flogging Molly tends to stay fairly close to the core style of playing that they've developed over the years (and this is not a bad thing since it's a good style). The winners for me on this album are definitely Float (you might have heard it on the radio even), Punch Drunk Grinning Soul (my personal absolute favourite), and Lightning Storm. The arrangements for each of these songs provide for a very flowing movement from one song to the next, and they don't fall into the trap of song duplication with variation (what the hell is that!? Basically each track being almost indistinguishable from the others). Each track is very distinct in it's own nature while still holding to the very Celtic moving style that Flogging Molly has developed so well.

As I said earlier, even if you've never listened to Flogging Molly before, this isn't a bad album to start out with. If you've never jigged before, Flogging Molly will make you jig (I won't gurantee this, but it definitely gets my foot moving). Perhaps I'll need to add a "Jiggification grade" to the albums (: All in all, awesome job Flogging Molly, I continue to look forward to any future endeavours they take on because they do awesome work.