CONSIGN TO OBLIVION

‘Consign to Oblivion’ is my introduction to Epica, and what a great experience it was! Their music is probably not the most original of all (even the band name was taken from Kamelot’s album), but that’s not a problem at all because they have their own style. Gothic metal isn’t really my cup of tea, but this band is not just another gothic metal band. They combine metal with some classical elements by using orchestration and in their works, which is the reason I like them. They include some growling vocals on some of their songs as well, and while it’s not the best growling vocals I’ve ever heard, it’s not horrible either. The main element of Epica’s music is the beautiful vocal of Simone Simons. She has an excellent voice and a great range too. Another thing is that her voice doesn’t sound like an opera singer, which one of the reason why I don’t like band such as Nightwish.

Anyway, let’s go through the tracks now. Actually this band has quite a style in making albums. They start with an orchestrated track which also incorporating some choir like what they’ve done here with ‘Hunab K’u’. Following the opening is ‘Dance of Fate’ which kicks out with some guitar riffs and keyboard works. This is track is a quite good example of Epica’s music as well as an introduction to their sound for me, symphonic metal which not all about heavy, but also features the beauty of classical music. ‘The Last Crusade’ has a great orchestration part in the opening, and this track also has some choir singing. Again, an example of good combination between classical music and metal. Next is ‘Solitary Ground’, the first soft and melodic song in this album. This track has a nice melody and vocal performance by Simone. ‘Blank Infinity’ has a nice opening section, with some piano melody and guitar and drumming followed up. The chorus of this track is quite cool, with the choir and bit of orchestration parts which make the track sounds a bit epic like their name.

‘Force of the Shore’ is the first track you’d hear growling vocals. This and the strong choir and singing combined with the orchestration really make the track sounds dark and very gothic. Cool track, even the growling won’t bother you that much, it’s not ruining the song in any way I could assure you. After that, you’ll hear another softer track, providing a bit of break after the last song. ‘Quietus’ has opening parts that resembles a bit of folk music. Although I did say softer track before, this song still features guitar riffs and drumming in relatively slow tempo. The orchestration parts in the background also give a nice feeling to the track overall. It’s getting heavy again now with ‘Mother of Light’. This track features a cool orchestral-metal opening, and there’s also a bit of growling voices here, but the great music, orchestration and Simone’s beautiful vocal would probably cover it for the whole track. Coming up next is the beautiful ballad ‘Trois Vierges’. The only thing that I could describe about this song, it’s a simply wonderful, sad track with quite haunting melody and vocal. There’s an appearance by Kamelot’s singer Roy Khan here as, uh the male vocal of course. Only two tracks left now, coming up is ‘Another Me ‘In Lack’ech’, a track with features some great orchestration, choirs and strong vocal. And now we’ve come to the top of the show. The title track is not only the last but also the most awesome and most epic track of the album! Listen to the great orchestration, choir, combined with the guitar riffs, the growl – uh, some of you might like to ignore this part; there’s only a few anyway, and the beautiful vocal, it’s really the highlight of the album! The keyboard solo in the middle part reminds me of Rhapsody, which is cool actually. Symphonic metal for life! Ahem, I better settle myself now.

Overall, this is an excellent album with great combination of classic elements and metal. The great thing about Epica is they don’t fill the whole album with lots of heavy riffs and solo, but rather focused on the classical elements such as the orchestration and choir. Lots of great compositions here and it’s clearly not just like another symphonic metal music in general, really. For you who like gothic or symphonic metal this is probably an album you’d want to have. Even if you’re not into those genre, this is still an album that worth to try. Highly recommended.

A very hard CD to review and to rate. Epica's second efford is surely very good, but it pales when compared to the impact of their debut. Ok, let's be fair, you can't expect one masterpiece after the other. With success comes a lot of pressure, and I wonder how much pressure those guys were under after the unexpected success of their first release. So Consigh To Oblivion sounds to me like it was released before the band had time to fully develop the ideas for this record. That does not mean that this record is bad. Not al all. In fact it is very good.

The orchestral arrangements, the choirs and the production are all superb. The band is as sharp and skillful as ever. Simone Simmons is definitly one of the best female prog metal singers in the world. The only department that is not in full use is the songwriting's. All tunes are good, ok, but the album brings nothing especial or different from the first one. I think that if they had more time to work their ideas the result could be a lot better, but I'm just guessing.

All in all a worth album to have, especially if you like the first one. here are enough good moments to grant a 3 star rating at least. Maybe 3,5, because they are so special. But this CD could be bigger.

This is probably the most solidly constructed album epica has written. Unlike their first album, the level of cheesy cliches has been greatly reduced, and unlike their new album, this album is somewhat restrained. In other words, fans of gothic metal might prefer this one, fans of prog metal might prefer their next one, and idiots might prefer the first one ;). This album is very memorable, with catchy songs that will stick in your head forever. You can certainly pick up on lots of creativity here as well, and not the gimmicky creativity of the first album, but genuinely creative moments where you wonder how they thought of that. The execution of the ideas is much better too. This can be observed in the instrumental introduction at the beginning. It is a very soundtrack-inspired song, almost a sort of pirates of the carribeanesque vibe, but listen to how well orchestrated it is. The parts work together fantastically well, with layers of instruments complementing each other and standing on their own, it sounds like true classical music, not some goth metal band's compositions. The second song is a gothic metal song, and is equally fantastic. The vocal melody is really powerful, something that could not work in classical music, but on a metal song sounds perfectly emotive and chilling.

The individual performances are mixed. Simone sounds stronger on this album than the last one, but not as strong as on the next one. The drumming is better, but also not as good as the next album. Mark Jansen is a pretty good guitarist, and is probably the most skilled member of the band, of course he has more experience having originally been from After Forever. Speaking of After Forever, this album shares similarities to their album Decipher, and it seems Mark is still trying to match that album, sort of seeking to fufill his vision that he couldn't quite reach with After Forever before he was sacked. The example of the vocals in the first song not fitting classical but sounding good in metal is something that came right out of Decipher. It seems like he is reaching for a sound that he just can't quite grasp, trying to fufill some gothic vision. That doesn't detract from this album in any way. This album is truly beautiful at moments, and although it doesn't maintain a consistently great sound throughout, there aren't any bad parts, just good parts and less good points. The best songs are the first 2 and the title track, which is an epic 10 minuter, with beautiful orchestration and pretty good metal too.

Consign to repeated listening

Released 2 years after their debut, Epica's "Consign to Oblivion" sees the band adopting an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" approach. Indeed, not only does this album follow on seamlessly from "The Phantom Agony", it would fit equally well in the discography of Mark Jansen's previous band After Forever. The overall concept of the album revolves around the Mayan culture which has been "Consigned to oblivion". Intriguingly though, the sleeve notes advise us that the longest time cycle of that culture comes to an end in 2012, although it is unclear what will happen at that time. Watch this space..

The albums opens with a suitably pompous overture featuring orchestra and choir, sounding for all the world like the theme to an epic western. As we segue into "Dance of fate", the double paced drums and anthemic chants could be mistaken for one of Rhapsody's Hollywood metal excesses. Only when the pure tones of Simone Simons mezzo-soprano vocals hit the screen do we find the band's signature.

It is of course easy at this stage to make valid comparisons with the work of Nightwish, who plough a similar furrow. Although the two bands do indeed march to similar drums, there are clear differences between them. Epica for example appear to place more emphasis on the pomposity, and to these ears are generally heavier. This makes the contrasts between the metallic basis of the songs and the choral arrangements even more marked, the opening segment of "The last crusade" being a good case in point.

Simons comes to the fore on the fine power ballad "Solitary ground", one of a number of songs where she writes her own lyrics. The following "Blank infinity" combines that ballad style with the epic metal of the bulk of the album, thus forming a good transition song. "Force of the short" is the first track here to include growled vocals, but these are suitably masked by the loud and progressive arrangement, and contrasted by soprano chorales.

We revisit Rhapsody territories for "Quietus", which opens with folk like harpsichord leading to a Nightwish like power metal number. Four of the eleven tracks are nominally linked by the sub-title "A new age dawns", although the link appears to be thematic rather than musical. These tracks are not contiguous, but spread throughout the album. "Mother of light" is the third such piece, the previous two being the opening overture and "The last crusade". The track mixes a looser style of pop rock type vocal with fast operatic bursts and a fine core of softer vocal.

"Trois Vierges" was originally written for the film "Joyride", the song featuring guest vocals by Roy Khan of Kamelot alongside Simons. The song is a strangely reflective number which does not really fit with the rest of the album. Normal service resumes though with "Another me", a song which captures the Mayan doctrine that "What goes around comes around" or to put it another way "You reap what you sow". The song is a more orthodox pomp metal number with operatic overtones. The title track, which closes the album, forms the final part of the "New age dawns" quartet. This epic piece is by far the longest on the album at a shade under 10 minutes. Here the band draw together all the strands which make up the album in a wonderful cacophony of opera, orchestra, growls, metal and melodic vocal.

In all, a fine album which will appeal to those who enjoy the music of Rhapsody, Nightwish, After Crying etc. There is nothing particularly original or different here, so the album does not distinguish itself from its peers to any great extent. It is though a highly enjoyable piece of over the top pomposity.

The "Limited edition" version includes a DVD which contains a superficial introduction to each of the band members and some studio footage. Unfortunately, apart from a clip from a gig at the end (which sounds like it has been overdubbed), there is little in the way of performance and no videos. To that extent, the DVD is an opportunity missed.

Half-star to Masterpiece ...

What I have in my mind so far is that Epica plays power metal music and I did not pay particular attention to its releases. Yes, I bought the CD of the later album "Divine Conspiracy" and now I am shocked having this album which in fact was released long time ago. It matters to me because some of the music reminds me to Haggard's "Tales of Ithiria" which I have adored so far. Other parts of the music remind me to Kamelot.

Well, I don't wanna talk some more about who the band is as I assume that most of you are fully aware about it and if you aren't ...easy man...just click your computer and ask Dr Google to explain it. What I really wanna do in this write-up is to share with you about the outcome, not really the output of the music. frankly, I really want to do differently in my review style as I have been - in so far - focus more on the output, i.e. the quality of the music instead of what I feel about it. Why do I need to do it differently? Because that's what lacking so far - there have been many reviews that concentrate ore on quality, eg. the musical composition as well as the musicians' performance in the album. That's all about the output. Quality output does not directly correspond to good outcome. How come? I give you a simple example. No one would argue on the quality of classical music, especially with those made by top-class composer such as Beethoven, Mozart, Thcakovsky (spelling?). For me personally, classical music does not satisfy my needs in terms of my feeling towards the music. Why? Simple. So far, classical music is like a lobby music - i.e. the music that frequently played at the hotel lobby. The circumstances and nuances where I listen to the music do not support me to have a special feeling about the music. Music is emotion ...

Let's see this Consign to Oblivion

Easy to Digest. That's the first reaction from me the first time I played this album. Oh man ... I love the orchestral piece "Hunab Ku (1:45) the first time I listened to it and I could digest it very easily. That's probably my association with Kamelot's "Regalis Apertura" as an opening piece of "Forever" in Karma album. It's hard for me to differentiate which one I love most between this and Kamelot's "Regalis Apertura". But when the music enters to the next track "Dance of Fate" (5:13) there is a disconnected piece in between. That's OK because the second track is basically mind-boggling with its riffs as well as powerful female vocal that reminds me to Tarja Turunen (ex vocalist of Nightwish). My point is that the overall music of this album is easy to digest and makes me happy while listening to it.

Captivating. It's true. From the first time I played this album, I feel that the emotion created as result of listening to this album is really captivating and makes me energized even though there are segments or even songs with mellow style like the "Solitary Ground". I really enjoy this track having listened to the third track "The Last Crusade" which has higher energy than the second track. The band is successful in creating pieces of music that combines great choirs, poweful symphonic nuances combined with power metal riffs and excellent vocal. I enjoy the album from start to end and usually I keep repeating again because I want to restart from the beginning again.

Rich in Variety. Well, what I mean here is basically more on the singing style that combines female vocal, choirs and growling vocal. I do enjoy the one like "Force of The Shore". The growling vocal sounds really good and I sometimes replayed this song again. In general, Epica is excellent in combining the female vocal, metal riffs, orchestra arrangements and growling vocals. Oh.. I forget to tell you that all songs have a very solid melody that is memorable and makes you sing when you repeat the song for the second time. "Quietus" reminds me to the music of Rhapsody (of Fire).

All of the three things (the bold words) have made me energized when I listen to this album. That' means a lot to me because I can have high energy and keep myself motivated the whole day. That's what the music is for. In terms of outcome - how satisfied I am with the music - I would say this album is only half-star to masterpiece. Four and a-half stars and very highly recommended, especially if you have metal-mind. Keep on proggin' ...!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

In my opinion, Epica released two of their first albums that are solid but not too memorable for fan searching for distinctive metal music. Although they have had solid symphonic traces and music execution at the time already, there isn't the appetite for experimentation and development that started in 2007. Epica is capable of writing accessible melodic pieces like "Solitary Ground" or "Quietus" no wonder these became Epica live anthems. My favourites as a prog metal fan are the two tracks with the longest names such as the Consign To Oblivion ('A New Age Dawns' #3) that has pretty versatile music surroundings ranging from extreme vocals (Death/Black) to elegant classical feel. A promising album.