Sirenia, Dim days of dolor

After Morten discovered (or better said rediscovered) his talent on the previous album and I noticed that since they have a good songwriter now, all they need is a good singer, it seems like decided to fully upgrade themselves and replaced Ailyn with someone who actually knows how to sing. The result? An honourable album that makes me glad I didn’t give up on this band.

On Goddess of the sea we get acquainted with the new lead singer, Emmanuelle Zoldan, a classically trained mezzo that marks the return to a style of music that most contemporary bands are moving further away from. No worries, after Ailyn the human squeaky toy, Emmanuelle is a real blessing to my ears. The song is decent enough as well and it has an interesting male choir that turns it from mundane to mildly entertaining.

Dim days of dolor, the title track, is one of the weakest of the album, so if you’re basing your opinion on this track alone, maybe you should give them another change. It gets better, I promise. It’s a bouncy pop song draped with some guitars, that seems to have taken a lesson from the Delain textbook of vapid metal. Between the joyful and highly believable “I’ve been losing my mind” and my unanswered question of why in the world would you take a talented singer and drown her voice in the same crappy sound effects that used to save Ailyn, it’s safe to say this is not the height of their creativity.

Thankfully, a Therion choir comes in the shape of The 12^th hour to erase the sour taste. Combined with the grunts that don’t appear out of thin air for once, a dynamic chorus and a heavy bridge that actually has a build up, it makes for a nice change.

Treasure n treason has quite a catchy beginning and a few interesting moments here and there, but just like in all the previous tracks, as soon as Emannuelle starts singing, everything dies around her. I thought this was done in order to accommodate Aylin and not drown her in instruments, but here they have a powerful poignant voice and they still rely on the same type of tricks. Had I not heard Morten masterfully use Vibeke Stene in Tristania, I would think he has no idea how to write for a female voice. In this case, I like to think it’s too little time to get used to her style (emphasis on “like”).

Since Cloud nine, however, they start to pick up the pace and most of the following songs are surprisingly good (by Sirenia standards). There are still some issues with the transitions (their old nemesis), but for the most part it’s a coherent track, with some innovations and changes in the song structure, where I finally care about what’s going on.

Veil of winter surprises me yet again with some pleasant clean male vocals (resemblant of the new Tristania, ironically), a beautiful growth towards the chorus and the revelation that a symphonic metal band can write a good song even without drowning it in choirs. Also, I realise that everything that comes after Aylin appears as an improvement, but I truly like the new vocalist, she seems she has more to offer other than the generic operatic vocals we’re so used to.

And speaking of Ailyn, Ashes to ashes sounds like something she would sing (in terms of phrasing, voice inflections etc.), so when I hear Emmanuelle sing with power and fitting in with the song, I realise how much difference makes a voice that supports and adds to the instrumental instead of detracting from it. If you count the old school keyboards as well, I realise I kind of missed this genre.

With Elusive Sun they go back to their issue of creating the vocal line. I like to believe that the tracks were written with Ailyn in mind, before they decided to part ways with her, because that’s exactly how they sound and it would be a shame to think that they finally have a talented singer and are still using her for the same shit. Other than that, though, I genuinely like the track. It reminds me a lot of Epica, but ironically, it sounds better. Same with Playing with fire, they are both fairly interesting.

Fifth column starts like most other tracks in a very catchy and promising manner, but Morten must have a target of mediocre songs per album, because every time he has some sparks of his old self, he takes care of drowning them into some insipid generic bullshit, topped off with an out of the blue grunt section. It also becomes obvious that even aside from the disjointment of each part, the biggest problem this band has is the lack of feeling. It doesn’t sound bad and for the most part I’m interested in what’s going on, but there’s literally zero emotion.

This becomes even more obvious in Aeon’s embrace, a ballad with a sweet piano in the background that had the potential of being quite pretty if it had some soul. As it is, it’s just a generic ending track that helps them tick off the mandatory slow song of the record.

In the end it’s a rather pleasant surprise. If the last album showed progress in terms of songwriting, this one continues on that path and even tops it off with a vast improvement in terms of vocals. If my intuition is right and this album was written for Ailyn’s voice, the next one will probably correct a lot of inadequacies of this one, so I imagine (or at least hope) there’s more evolution in store.