Search - Epica :: We Will Take You With Us

A musical tour de force, but lyrically . . . not so much

Arthur Digbee | Indianapolis, IN, USA | 11/26/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In a world of highly-marketed pop, rap and hip-hop, and repetitive dance electronica, it's good to see that somebody is still taking their music seriously. The prog rock tradition of the 1970s is alive and well, and it includes death grunts and mezzo sopranos. Epica has given us an excellent effort in this album. Its major strengths are its musical compositions, while it falls flat lyrically in various places.



The album consists of two parts, six metal tracks followed by three acoustic tracks. The final acoustic track is "Memory" from the musical "Cats"- a nice cover, but a bit out of place. Tracks 1, 4 and 6 are parts 5, 4 and 6 (in that order!) of "The Embrace that Smothers," a group of related pieces about the downsides of religion in the world today. This strikes me as a very odd way to present connected pieces, but each one stands on its own just fine.



The first track, "Facade of Reality," is a very carefully constructed piece built around four voices: Simone Simons singing (in a high mezzo-soprano) a lecture about why Islamic fundamentalists become suicide bombers, death grunts for suicide bombers, a chorus for the Latin lyrics, and two cameo appearances by Tony Blair talking about September 11. Most of the lyrics are unintelligible, which is just as well - - it's really hard to pull off something like this. However, the piece is very powerful musically, with the voices beautifully set off one another.



The other tracks follow in the same vein. Each is an impressive construction that explores a series of musical themes. Most of the pieces set Simone's operatic voice against a heavy metal instrumentation, with occasional death grunts and chorus. However, the lyrics tend not to work so well. For example, in "Seif al-Din," a brief spoken word passage falls completely flat, in contrast to the successful use of Blair's spoken words in "Facade of Reality." Aside from the fact that Tony Blair is a better rhetorician than Simone Simons, this simply highlights the lyrical overreach found throughout the album - - Epica is simply trying too hard.



In places, the band's lyrics seem pretentious, as when they combine Latin, Arabic and English in a single song. The band also has a bad case of taking itself too seriously; in both respects, they remind me of Kansas during its heyday. They want to sing about "big themes" such as religious extremism, but they are unable to reach the lyrical complexity of the masterpiece of that genre, Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" album. Simons writes most of the lyrics, and is very young - - so we can hope that matters will improve as she gets more songwriting and life experience under her belt.



The band makes much of the fact that Simone Simons has a classic operatic training, and she certainly has a beautiful voice. However, she still sings from low in her throat instead of her diaphragm, so that she loses both power and richness at times. Beautiful as her voice is, the result is that Simone Simons is not as charismatic as other female goth singers such as Tarja Turunen (Nightwish) or Sharon van Adel (Within Temptation). This makes for a less dynamic contribution to the group as a whole. On the other hand, she has a more powerful and charismatic presence than, say, Liv Kristine of Leaves' Eyes (formerly of Theatre of Tragedy).



In short, "We Will Take You With Us" is a very ambitious album - - but its lyrical reach exceeds its grasp. However, it's well worth your attention for the music."