Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy this album!, 30 Sep 2004
Okay, so let me be the first to recommend this album to the rest of us Brits...
Within Temptation formed in 1996, after Robert Westerholt grabbed his friends, along with his girlfriend (lead singstress Sharon Jenny Den Adel) and started the band. Their first release, "Enter", was much darker, much more Death Metal, much more gothic, and whilst still being brilliant for die-hard fans like myself, was not very accessible.
After another short release entitled "The Dance", Mainland Europe was struck in 1999 with "Mother Earth", an album which, whilst chopping and changing a few elements here and there to make it more accessible, is easily their best work to date.
As you might guess from the name, the album is a gothic-pop metal masterpiece, with all the songs having a mystical/fantasy theme. They have been compared to Evanescence (although in my opinion their sound is very different), and if you're in the Nightwish/Lacuna Coil/Epica group, this is an album for you.
Ice Queen is easily the best track on the album, and probably also the single that made them massive on the Continent. Its powerchords, along with a gothic sounding choir and orchestral jingles, make it available to anybody with even a remote interest in metal.
I would class this mainly as Opera Metal (a subgroup which only really has two major bands, the other being Nightwish). And as with Nightwish's Tarja Turunen, Sharon has an incredibly distinct and unique voice. A good comparison would be Kate Bush (check out their cover of Running up That Hill, an improvement on the original). Her vocals soar over the walls of gothic sound, both strong and gentle in equal measures.
I was lucky enough to be amongst the British fans who saw them at the Scala in London, performing their first UK gig. I can promise you, their stage presence is truly astounding, and should you have the chance to see them, take it up immediately!
This release also features a bonus disc of extra material; grab a copy before they're all gone!Let me make one prediction...this band are already huge in Europe; they are about to explode in the UK!
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Temptingly beautiful, 1 Nov 2002
Within Temptation are hard to comprehend when you consider that being a band is just a hobby to them, since they spend a lot of time in 'proper jobs'. How then, they've managed to get Mother Earth together is a wonder. This band have been likened to After Forever [and indeed they do collaborate occasionally] and their style is similar, though softer and more dreamy, for want of a less annoying word. All the elements are there - the heavy guitars, the choirs and Sharon del Adel's incredible voice which is one of the purest and most beautiful in the genre. I read one reviewer describe WT as 'orchestral Gothic metal' [whatever that means], but that's the closest I've heard anyone get to what this is.All of the tracks here are good, but the title track, Ice Queen and Caged could be dubbed as outstanding. There are softer, piano-dominated tracks, such as Our Farewell and Neverending Story [yes, there is something Fantasy-esque about this album, as the cover-art hints at]. The only slightly annoying thing is how the Mother Earth theme permeates much of the album and how they use some kind of flutelike effect in some of the songs, but if you can get over this [which isn't hard to do, admittedly], all the better. If you like your instrumentation heavy and your vocals soaring and harmonic, this is for you.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emotive Power, 2 Sep 2005
This album continues to astonish me. The celtic theme drives the album throughout, and makes for a comforting, if tentative, view of the world. The power of Sharon den Adel's voice is incredible. Forget Nightwish comparisons, the emotive power of this band comes from a completely different place (The Netherlands in fact).
However a word of caution; if your looking big metal riffing, this album will disappoint.
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