Within Temptation - Mother Earth

*=Staff's pick	Mother Earth* Ice Queen* Our Farewell Caged The Promise Never-ending Story Deceiver Of Fools* Intro Dark Wings* In Perfect Harmony Restless (bonus track) Bittersweet (bonus track) Enter (bonus track) The Dance (bonus track)

Genre	Opera Metal	Sharon den Adel	Vocals
Tracks	14	Robert Westerholt	Guitar
Runningtime	76 Min.	Ruud Jolie	Guitar
Label	GUN	Jeroen van Veen	Bass
Release	07 June 2003	Stephen van Haestregt	Drums
Country	Holland	Martijn Spierenburg	Keyboards
Similar artists	Nightwish, Epica, Edenbridge, Lacuna Coil

The album starts beautifully with the title track Mother Earth with a great drum driven rhythm and with a powerful melodyline played by flute, and when the singing begins I find myself being embraced by this wonderful music. This continues with the second track Ice Queen that also is a midtempo paced track and equally beautiful as the first one.

And if all tracks could have been this great this would have been a masterpiece, Sharon den Adel has a really great voice that is a mixture of the opera characteristics of Tarja from Nightwish and the frailness of Kate Bush (English pop-artist that had her peak in the eighties with songs like: Running Up The Hill and Wuthering heights). That voice combined with the music that has a gothic sense to it makes sure that the possibilities are definitely there in order to make a great album.

But as in many cases the album doesn't hold up in quality through the ten songs ( I doesn't include the bonus tracks in my review), the orchestral influences takes over far too much at times, it feels like it has been to overdone. And than there is the ballads, they are a bit too "sweet" for my taste, I really enjoy this kind of music when you have a flow in the rhythm as it is backed up by an orchestra, but when is loses speed it also often loses my interest.

My two favourite tracks are Deceiver Of Fools that starts slow and beautifully orchestrated to then pick up the pace in the chorus to a powerful midtempo song in the vein of Nightwish, the other one is Dark Wings that is the most straightforward and fastest track on the album.

The orchestration on the album gives a nice depth to the music and you get a concert hall feeling by listening, but it gets a bit too much after awhile when the tempo is slowed down. As beautiful and soothing the music of Within Temptation might be it is not an album to "get metal" to, but I'm quite certain that Mother Earth will be played in my headphones several times when I'm hung over or just want to relax for a moment.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	9	5

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Thomas