'Epica' had made us patient with the release of 'The Quantum Enigma (B-Sides)' at the end of 2020 because their last album 'The Holographic Principle' already dated from 2016 and it is its successor which is now available since the end of February 2021. The fame that the Dutch have forged since a decade is now impressive, their facebook page exceeding 2 million subscribers (the period of early 2010 during which they filled the small room of the z7 is far away !!), makes that a good number of fans awaited this new offering of the band at 'Simone Simons'. No need to make you languish, 'Epica' continues to make 'Epica' style and, all the compositions are in the right line of the previous opus with imposing symphonic orchestrations, grandiose choirs and a singing / growl duo between 'Simone Simons 'and' Mark Jansen 'which has always performed admirably, all supported by accessible melodic lines often mixing East and West.
First of all it's still a dense album as we are already used to with 'Epica' because it is 70 minutes available to us and 'Omega' is a new concept album and deals with different subjects such as this convergence of spiritual beliefs, scientific observations and that everything that makes up the universe converges in the direction of an end point but also, in bulk, of yin and yang, of the balance between light and l darkness, good and evil, the climate emergency or even genetic manipulations : a whole program. Given the density of this album, making title to title would require too long a chronicle (and there are already tons of them on the internet) and therefore, I will focus this one on three points : first, l 'opus offers melodic lines which are immediately tame and which make that, from the first listening, one is immediately hooked by each composition and this from the beginning with 'Abyss of Time - Countdown to Singularity' which, after the setting in instrumental appetite 'Alpha - Anteludium', pours us a heady melody and which has all the ingredients that I mentioned above. Then, with the means that the group has garnered in the past years thanks to its growing popularity, they can now afford the luxury of calling on a full orchestra, an imposing choir and even a children's choir, which considerably densifies the whole and which ensures that each composition is worked down to the smallest detail and brings an impressive dimension, not to mention the production which is always so admirable. The other point which is also to underline and which shows all the talent of this formation, is that the earbook edition accompanying the two other editions is not simple filling but contains in addition to the main CD, 3 other CDs with first of all, as they had already accustomed us to with 'The Quantum Enigma' and 'The Holographic Principle', covers in acoustics which are literally transformed and bring a whole different reading than the original titles; then, the other two CDs are the instrumental CD without the vocals of Simone and the growls of Mark and it is especially the last CD which contains the orchestral versions, highlighting the impressive work of orchestration and which allows to bring out the instruments of the orchestra which brings an additional dimension to this album. We can also note that they did not skimp on the video outputs because in addition to Abyss Of Time 'which was the subject of a single at the end of 2020 and which can be viewed above, three other videos are now available on you tube with 'Freedom – The Wolves', 'Rivers' and ' The Skeleton Key'.
In summary, as you will understand, the Dutch of Epica 'continue their way with impressive albums which shows that it is not chance that leads them to be one of the leaders in this particular style because they have this talent to merge the metal and the symphonic in a grandiose way with, icing on the cake, melodic lines always very accessible... | |
