AFTER FOREVER - Self Titled CD + DVD

AFTER FOREVER - Self Titled CD + DVD
Since the band EVANESCENCE made it's breakthrough single into the US pop music airways. Female fronted progressive/symphonic/gothic metal bands from Europe are popping out faster than breasts during Spring Break in Florida. AFTER FOREVER are the latest European export, although this Dutch band has been around for a while. This, their fifth full length, is the first to properly reach our shores via a big metal label, Nuclear Blast.

Unfortunately what this band as well as all others of this genre suffer from is
repetitiveness. You have a handful of songs that are catchy enough to hold your attention. But then the filler Euro centric symphonic melodies come in to test your attention to metal detail. The band even enlist the city of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra on here. And that's when you are reminded that all these bands must be produced from the same commercial template. You got your complex arrangements, beefy guitars and bass, whirling keyboard solos, and of course the hot female vocalist. In AFTER FOREVER it's Floor Jansen, who can punch the opera like vocals up to where former NIGHTWISH singer,Tarja Turenen, once did for Finland's entry in this genre. Although I'll take Floor over the former NIGHTWISH diva any day.


Songs like "Evoke" and "Energize Me" are definite winners in the metal music radio airplay department. They're throwbacks to the 80's power metal days in style. "Equally Destructive" could even touch the hearts of those into the more extreme side of metalish themes. That's if you still have a heart. Alot of the songs on here have Floor and guitarist/composer Sander Gommens in dueling vocals. Floor with the glorious soprano and Sander doing the death metal grunting. It works well on "Withering Time" and on the disc's opener "Discord".

"De-Energized" is where the CD starts moving away from the more pop friendly tunes and the songs turn towards a more complex route. This is where the Gothic/Prog stylings take over for better or worse. And by the halfway point of the 11 minute metal-opera epic "Dreamflight", I was at my limit. Like I explained in the beginning of this review. Alot of this genre's style is decent but formulated to the ultimate degree. Genre purists will obviously go ape shit over this and obviously they should. AFTER FOREVER are a fantastic band, my Dutch heritage having no bias in that statement. I made it three quarters of the way through before I was ready to hear something else. Maybe you can do better. Still, it's a great release of epic proportions.
Nuclear Blast Records

http://www.nuclearblast.com
http://www.afterforever.com
http://www.myspace.com/afterforever