After Forever - Invisible Circles
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Free Music Notes for Invisible Circles
Free Music Review: What the soap opera...!?
Hit: 3 Stars
Sometimes, I find myself wondering why ex-guitarist and primary composer Mark Jansen departed After Forever to form Epica... and then I listen to Invisible Circles. In the three years since AF's ear-opening album, Decipher, the band has seemingly decided that their flawless approach was in need of some renovation.
The music on Invisible Circles has, at the same time, the most aggressive songcraft ("Blind Pain") and the most watered down balladry ("Eccentric") seen on an After Forever album to date. The full, lush orchestral arrangements have been replaced by proggy keyboard leads and symphonic enhancements that no longer sound so much symphonic as they do synthetic. The guitars have developed a definite sense of crunch and an attitude of progressiveness that sees them exploring some rather elaborate arrangements and halfway interesting riffing patterns, acoustic segments, and leads... halfway interesting because a lot of it sounds forced, like they tried too hard and only half-way succeeded. Andre Borgman's drumming has moved in a similar direction, once again acting as a breath of fresh air in a genre saturated with predictable and trite percussion. Floor is... Floor. However, there's something about Floor on this album that doesn't really sit right with me. I have immense trouble saying or writing anything negative about her talents, but throughout this album her voice sounds sort of strained. Maybe it has something to do with her delivery - much more immediacy, drive, and power that seems almost forced; not quite as pure and angelic. Perhaps I'm just being nitpicky... she still blows her peers out of the water with extreme prejudice. With the departure of Mark Jansen, growling and snarling duties have been taken over by guitarist Sander Grommans, and while the vocals themselves aren't bad, they seem dreadfully out of place at times... not really complementing Floor so much as just taking up valuable space.
The album starts off promisingly with "Childhood in Minor", which evokes images of children playing in a carousel. Not just any carousel though, but a carousel that's under the watchful eye of some sinister, invisible entity. This subtly menacing mood rolls over into "Beautiful Emptiness", which sees Floor reaching for the heavens (hah, no pun intended) straight off the bat, but quickly abandons that and meanders through driving metal, piano-led serenity, and one or two instrumental evolutions before reaching "Between Love and Fire"...
...and here, my friends, is where the true horror of Invisible Circles is revealed to the audience.
Around three minutes into the song, the band drops out and spoken dialogue ensues between two individuals - a male and a female arguing and yelling about various broken-home related things. It becomes apparent that this is a concept album. A concept album about a girl growing up in a home full of discontent. A girl unloved and unwanted by her father. A girl growing up in confusion as she's trying to figure out how everything went so horribly wrong. In other words, an extremely cliché concept. The male and female mentioned above are the father and the mother in this melodramatic soap opera. Now, the concept itself isn't really the problem - the problem is with the actual delivery. This act (and all that follow) is so horrendously pathetic that I would actually feel embarrassed should anybody ever catch me listening to this album in public. Honestly, I'm afraid to recommend this album to anybody I know in real life because of those interludes. They are awful.
Of course, those spoken interludes make up an almost insignificant portion of the album's running time, and are mostly placed at the end of a given song so that they become easy to skip and erase from your mind - permanently.
Ironically, the part of this album that really floors me also makes up an insignificant portion of its running time. The part in question lasts for approximately two seconds and comes in at roughly 1:15 (and again at roughly 1:22, for a total of four seconds of music) into "Two Sides". It is Floor Jansen singing a particular line in harmony with herself, but the way the vocal lines are layered and her absolutely godly delivery is just so completely incredible that it makes me want to lay down and die peacefully... and the effect is multiplied ten-fold through headphones. As silly as it might seem to buy a 59+ minute album just to drool over four seconds of it, I think I can safely say that I would do it with Invisible Circles. Label me daft. I care not!
Another standout moment is in "Sins of Idealism". Floor's vocals throughout the last minute or so of this song are totally reminiscent of past glory.
So... basically, just skip through the inane acting portions. The rest is still good After Forever material.
Free Music Review: More Like a Soap Opera
Hit: 3 Stars
So here we are. After Forever's highly anticipated, long awaited third full length album is finally available. Well I guess it was released almost a year ago and I'm just now getting around to reviewing it.
After Forever is a Symphonic, Gothic Metal, Beauty and Beast band from the Netherlands. They are a sextet but they also use guest musicians and singers to fill out their sound so it resembles a symphonic orchestra for a sound like many other popular European Metal bands like fellow countrymen Within Temptation and Norwegian band Sirenia and not unlike Nightwish and Therion..
Invisible Circles
Invisible Circles is based on a story about a girl, who was born unwanted by her father, growing up in a loveless home. The girl learns at an early age, that she is unloved and throughout the album between the music are little suites of the parents talking and arguing. There are occasional growling vocals, which is supposed to be the girl's inner self talking to her consciousness.
Probably the most notable member of the band is their highly acclaimed singer, Floor Jansen and even she seems to be struggling on this album, as her usually flawless voice seems both stretched and strident. The music is still Symphonic Metal with a backing orchestra and choir as in previous releases. What has changed is the bands approach. Instead of the conventional medieval Beauty and Beast approach of their past the song writers have decided to veer off into a more contemporary, avant garde style. While I applaud their initiative and intent to create an operatic masterpiece, it seems they only succeeded in the creation of a soap opera.
While I'm usually taken with concept albums, Invisible Circles is an exception. In fact, for me, Invisible Circles was one of my larger musical disappointments of 2004. After Forever's previous 2001 full album, Decipher was truly a remarkable recording and I was so looking forward to more of the same but alas, they decided to thread a new path. What path is that? I'm afraid they got lost and found the path of uninteresting music. There are to few hooks, at least nothing that hooks my attention and the melodies are closer to odious than melodious. Even the concept is uninteresting, being about the trials and tribulations of an unwanted little girl growing up in an unhappy family. I can see why Mark Jansen left and formed Epica after listening to this and Exordium, their preceding lackluster EP released in 2003. He obviously was not in agreement with the band's new musical path.
I usually find Floor Jansen's voice to be perfect but for some unknown reason, on this album, I found her voice was grating, almost irritating, like she was too strident or something. Now Floor has one of the purest, most beautiful voices in the world but she seemed to be struggling at times with these songs.
I should point out that this album has received some rave reviews. God knows why but it seems there's always someone somewhere that will like something I dislike and vice versa, however, it's usually the other way around with me. When I and most other people are enthralled with a certain album, somebody will come along and rain on our parade. Well this time it's moi who is precipitating the precipitation. Not that this is a bad album, it's just a dull album, there`s nothing special.. No real highlights or highpoints and while a song may get interesting occasionally they manage to blow it before the song ends. In the past, After Forever has been one of the leading Symphonic Beauty and Beast bands and though they still show some symphonic elements, they're now leaning in a more progressive direction. There is nothing wrong with that but they're half way there and what we have is not the best of either genre and where they retain some of the old sound, they fail to close the deal. Give me back my "Leaden Legacy", "Monolith of Doubt", "Pledge of Allegiance", "The Key", "Follow the Cry" and "Forlorn Hope". Honestly, I can think of very little that appeals to me on this album.
Final Rating, 3.35 stars
Author's Note
I wrote this review over a period of a couple weeks and during that time I mellowed somewhat on this album. I originally thought I would rate this at a low two stars. I wound up giving it a high three stars. Still, overall this album is not up to the standard of their previous two releases, though it is better than I originally believed.
Free Music Review: great singer bad idea
Hit: 3 Stars
I am relatively new to gothic metal music. I have tried to sample a wide array of bands of the genre. I was looking forward to this cd because floor jansen is supposed to be one of the greats. I was slightly dissapointed with invisable circles mainly with the concept--which sounded like a husband and wife bickering at times. The spoken word parts ruined the continuity of the music in my opinion. Floor has a great voice, and if they would have kept to the usual subjects of goth metal, like fantasy, death, lovelorn etc. it would have been cool. But the lyrics were uninteresting in my opinion. So I would only recomend this cd to people who like soap operas, or chick flicks.Free Music Review: Invisible Circles
Hit: 3 Stars
I was relatively unimpressed with Invisible Circles. After hearing Prison of Desire and Decipher, I had expected better. The sound is still distinctly After Forever, but the lyrics are just silly. A story about a girl who likes to write in her diary that she doesn't like her life because her parents don't like her. And a poorly told story at that. The dialogues between Floor and Sander are hilariously pathetic. Neither one of them is a very good actor. The music is decent enough, but I find this to be a very mediocre album for them.Free Music Review: A Massive Disappointment
Hit: 2 Stars
Nothing is worse than seeing a promising young band take a turn in a direction you despise, and such is the case with the Dutch Gothic Metal band After Forever.
Since when did one of the brightest rising stars in Gothic Metal decide they want to be Evanescence? Following up from their excellent "Decipher," After Forever strip away anything remotely Gothic from their music and create this...this pitiful, maudlin excuse for a soap opera. The lyrics and concept behind "Invisible Circles" are the exact same kind of trite, overdone angst we're all thoroughly sick of here on the other side of the Atlantic.
"Invisible Cirlces" is a concept album about a girl who is miserable because she is unloved by her parents, so she hides in her own little world. The problem is that they storyline is handled in such a maudlin and melodramatic way that it's impossible to take seriously. With lyrics like "I can't believe how they can be so mean / If they could feel the brutal stings of their words /And the bitter cold when they laugh", it's hard to see anyone but some whiny, self-pitying teenage "Gawth" finding "Invisible Circles" anything but needlessly mawkish and bathetic. To top it all off, the band decided to insert scenes of "dialogue" between the characters of the mother and father, which were so hilariously bad I laughed out loud listening to them.
The music has suffered as well. Gone are the rich, classical influences of "Decipher," replaced by generic metal riffs and the occasional Death Growl. Even Floor Jansen, who always sounded great on previous albums, now comes off as shrill and irritating, full of what only can be described as whiny histrionics. Not a single track on "Invisible Circles" has anything close to a memorable hook, a memorable instrumental passage, or a display of Floor's vocal talents. The symphonic element of earlier After Forever albums has been toned down a lot, and overall it sounds like the music itself has been watered down to make the whole thing more commercially digestable.
"Invisible Circles" is a huge misstep from one of Gothic Metal's most promising bands. Stay with "Prison of Desire" or "Decipher" instead.