Search - Autumn :: My New Time

It's not Goth Metal, it's something even better.

D. Tonya | Barber-tucky, Ohio | 08/29/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Autumn has found a successful formula for what is becoming an increasingly crowded field of female fronted metal bands, a musical form often referred to as Gothic Metal. Many Goth metal bands feature the Beauty-and-the-Beast (B&B) approach, which has a female singer augmented with a male vocalist adding death metal grunts. This is how Autumn sounded on their previous album, Summer's End.



Thankfully, the band ditched the death metal grunts altogether for the My New Time album and instead focused on the wonderful vocals of Nienke De Jong. Nienke's vocals are more rock than the operatic direction followed by bands like Nightwish, Epica, and After Forever. She has the capability of singing in the lower octaves, which, when combined with her slight accent, gives her vocals a more sultry and seductive tone. She's also able to provide her own excellent backup vocals through multitracking which adds a lot of layering to the sound. But, before you think her voice is just the result of studio trickery, take a listen to "Epilogue" or "Forget to Remember" where she sings solo in the intro part of the songs.



The production on this album is nearly perfect. It's warm, clear, and well balanced without a hint of harshness or mud. The instrumentation and mixing allows for clean guitar interludes, tasteful keyboards, well place sound effects, and dare I say progressive touches in addition to the crunchy guitars. However, none of these elements are ever allowed to over shadow Nienke's vocals, and this is the real plus for the band moving forward. As such, the musical direction is more Goth Rock than Goth Metal. For example, "Closest Friends Conspire" starts off like a classic Deep Purple song with its heavy Hammond keyboard sound. This is not to say that the metal aspects aren't there, they just aren't as high in the mix. Songs like the title track are about as metallic as the heavier material from The Gathering's post "Mandylion" efforts.



I'm a big fan of vocals, probably attributable to my tube amplifier stereo system setup. Well-recorded vocals just float in the air and likewise badly recorded vocals become glaringly obvious. To say that I am enamored with Nienke's vocals is an understatement. I would recommend this album to anyone that likes great vocalists but doesn't care for the pretentiousness of Epica, Nightwish, and Within Temptation or for the death metal grunts in After Forever that detracts from Floor Jansen's goddess like singing. It's a shame that in America we can't hear bands like Autumn; we can only get schlock like Jessica Simpson or Brittany Spears.

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