EXORDIUM

Certainly not the place to start your After Forever experience, Exordium feels like a band releasing product that could have waited for their next album. The Dutch metal band is oft-described as "goth-metal" but this release is pretty much a pop-metal teaser without much authentic darkness or interesting composition. Floor Jansen is a decent soprano but After Forever does not deliver anything close to the better releases of a Nightwish or Epica, either in vocals quality or composition. One track here, "Glorifying Means," does manage to get off the ground with some wicked riffs and the tradeoff male death vocals with Jansen's pipes, dealing with the topic of drug addiction. But beyond that you have some subpar originals and two pretty lame covers. The DVD portion of this ridiculous waste of natural resources gives you the "My Choice" video along with the making of said video, of earth-shattering importance to the world apparently. For the scant amount of quality original music here the band issues two discs, a tri-fold digipak sleeve, and a 14-page booklet-the most egregious packaging decision since Loreena McKennitt issued a complete 2nd compact disc in her "Ancient Muse" release for *one bonus track*. Exordium is a completely unnecessary product purge-only for the most fervent After Forever fans is this recommended, and even then, barely.