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Post by Blood Avenger on Mar 14, 2016 11:14:12 GMT 7
Within Temptation - Enter 1997Artist: Within Temptation Title Of Album: Enter Release Date: 1997 Location: Netherlands Label: DSFA Records [DSFA 1007] Genre: Sympho Metal, Gothic Metal Quality: MP3 CBR 320 kbps Length: 45:45 min Tracks: 8 Total Size: 118 MB 01. Restless (6:08) 02. Enter (7:15) 03. Pearls Of Light (5:15) 04. Deep Within (4:30) 05. Gatekeeper (6:43) 06. Grace (5:10) 07. Blooded (3:38) 08. Candles (7:07)Sharon den Adel - Vocals Robert Westerholt - Guitars (rhythm), Vocals (harsh) Martijn Westerholt - Keyboards Ivar de Graaf - Drums Jeroen van Veen - Bass Michiel Papenhove - Guitars (lead) Recorded at Studio Moskou by Sylvia Vermeulen. Mixed by Lex Vogelaar & Oscar Holleman at RS 29. Produced by Lex Vogelaar & Within Temptation. Lex Vogelaar - Producer Anthony van den Berg - Executive producer (youcanDOWNhere) Rusfolder
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Post by Whisper Supremacy on Mar 14, 2016 22:53:48 GMT 7
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Post by Crucial Review on Mar 16, 2016 11:11:40 GMT 7
I listened to this album a year ago, when I was still new to metal, gothic and symphonic in particular, lured by the pretty interesting looking cover. And to be honest, it really captured my senses back then. Heck, I probably listened to the thing once per day.
Fast forward to a year later.
By then, I had dug deeper. I discovered other treasures like Tristania, After Forever, Theatre of Tragedy, and many others. They all set the scene nicely, letting me marvel at their angelic female vocals, powerful growling, and most of all, the dark, depressive atmosphere created by the instruments. But at some point, I rediscovered this album after sifting through my music collection. I didn’t remember a whole lot, really, and that made me want to listen to this again. I geared up all my courage, and started listening attentively, although I was supposed to be working on an extremely important project.
What a waste of forty-five minutes.
To be honest with you, I would have been far better off doing my work than deciding to even listen to this pile of general crap. The general musicianship is rather mediocre. Yes, you occasionally get a decent riff or two, but then it gets played over and over and over again (as in throughout the entire song), and it immediately loses its impact (to put it mildly). At its worst points, one or two riffs are played throughout the ENTIRE song. The keyboards, however, help manage to keep the entire thing floating, but nothing is particularly outstanding in that field, and it falls into the same generic, boring patterns. Bass is occasionally audible, but barely. Only a rabbit fitted with hearing aids could hear it even partially clearly. The drums? Don’t ask. My opinion is that something went wrong with the mixing (listen to the album to see what I mean), and nothing stands out there.
The vocalists’ performance doesn’t stand out either. Sharon den Adel’s vocal performance is decent and rather beautiful at times, but once again, her voice has nothing that makes it stand out from many other female vocalists, from Floor Jansen to Liv Kristine to Tarja Turunen, and yes, even Amy Lee in some way, for god’s sake. And don’t even get me started on the growling. Whoever performed those atrocious “growls” did not deserve to be given a recording contract. Variety? Alternation between growling and harsher screaming? Forget it. And, to add something else, this guy has an accent. Yes, I know that some other decent growlers have accents, but they are well concealed, or so insignificant that they are easily overlooked. Not here. The accents are so pronounced that someone with half an ear could hear it. And somehow, the growling makes him sound like an illiterate.
Next thing in the recipe of disaster: some of the cheesiest lyrics in lyrical history. I’ll paste some lyrics from “Grace” for your viewing pleasure:
“Cold are the bones of thy soldiers Longing for home, their little paradise I don't feel redemption on their side”
Fortunately, at times the lyrics are not as bad, such as the ones in “Restless” or “Candles.”
So what do you get for a general performance? Boring, repetitive songs with so little appeal that it’s almost sad. I would even be shedding tears, if it weren’t for the fact that they suddenly decided to make money off their career that the masses would suck up.
I will be generous, though, and point out a few good things. In my opinion, Within Temptation did a decent job with the atmosphere. The keyboards and vocals keep the entire thing afloat with the dark atmosphere they’re supposed to convey, and if it weren’t for those things, I would have immediately erased all traces of their existence by now. Also, I find the almost-but-not-quite epicness of “Candles” appealing. The guitars and keyboards work very well together here, the growls don’t kill the song, and if not for that boring repetitivety AGAIN, I would mark this song somewhere in the middle nineties. If the rest of the songs in this heap of trash were this good, I’d take some time to actually BUY this album, instead of downloading it. (Yes, I downloaded it.) The “good” songs had a few good points (they kept the melancholy atmosphere, all right), but all of them were ruined by overrepetitivety and awful vocalization, along with other factors.
So overall, this album is simply FAR too overrated. If you’re looking for decent gothic metal, I beg of you, don’t start with this: this is the epitome of bad music in general. If you will allow me, I would like to direct you towards Tristania’s first album for melancholy and general beauty. Also, have a look at After Forever, its cousin Epica, beauty and beast (singing and growling) pioneers Theatre of Tragedy, and many others. Anyone in the zone of this album, steer clear. It’s not worth it.
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Post by Crucial Review on Mar 16, 2016 11:12:16 GMT 7
Within temptation’s development has been a matter of discussion since its early days. When the band released “Mother Earth” some fans criticized the new sound, although still was an amazing work of gothic metal, quite soft, but maintaining a great quality. Even though suddenly this band lost all of their credibility and released and infamous album called "The Silent force", an embarrassing exercise of emulating bands like Evanescence and Nightwish.
Fortunately before they fell into disfavour with the metal scene Sharon and company released two great albums, specially the one I review, a masterpiece of gothic/doom metal called "Enter", sadly the only one which remains true to the genre. If we compare this album with other gothic/doom gems we can appreciate that the growls are not so prominent, mainly because in this debut Sharon commands most of the voices, but believe me, her performance here is absolutely awesome, her sweet, beautiful and fragile voice fits perfectly well with the music, shining specially in Restless and perhaps my favourite one, Candles, an amazing composition where you can dream helped by this angel’s voice. As I have mentioned the growls are few but well done, nothing spectacular but it gives the music the necessary strength and obscurity, Roberts reinforce the doomish atmosphere in songs like Enter. In Deep within, perhaps the most heaviest one, George Oosthoek of Orphanage adds some brutal vocals making this song a highlight.
But Enter is not great only because Sharon’s work. Far from the new metallic pop-rock guitars of later albums, which simplicity and lack of any harmony is embarrassing, in this album we can find the only guitar work in WT’s career which deserver some respect. Ok, this is not technical or complex metal, but at least we find some heavy riffs and melodies adding some density to the songs. A quite remarkable moment is the initial riff of Deep Within, a perfect example of what I have commented, it’s simple but quite addictive and more important, metallic. Don’t try to find anything comparable on the next albums because you will irremediably lose your time.
Overall, this album is fantastic from the very beginning to the end, with no clear flaws (perhaps too few growls?), an excellent and clear production and one of the best and most sensual covers I have ever seen in the gothic scene. It’s really a shame to see how WT lost its way only to obtain fame and money.
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