Band:	Delain
Album:	The Human Contradiction
Style:	Symphonic metal
Release date:	April 04, 2014
A review by:	Ag Fox

Disc I
01. Here Come The Vultures
02. Your Body Is A Battleground
03. Stardust
04. My Masquerade
05. Tell Me, Mechanist
06. Sing To Me
07. Army Of Dolls
08. Lullaby
09. The Tragedy Of The Commons

Disc II [limited edition bonus]
01. Scarlet
02. Don't Let Go
03. My Masquerade [live]
04. April Rain [live]
05. Go Away [live]
06. Sever [live]
07. Stay Forever [live]
08. Sing To Me [orchestral version]
09. Your Body Is A Battleground [orchestral version]

Beware! Accessible melodic metal alert!

Now that the wrist-slitting kvlt readers are gone, we can focus on Delain, which hardly needs introducing as one of the more popular female-fronted symphonic metal bands around as an offshoot of sorts from Within Temptation. Loyal readers may recall my scathing review of their previous release We Are The Others, but being a fan of their first two albums, my expectations were still there.

Either my prayers were answered or the band had simply taken some criticism on board, because their latest opus - The Human Contradiction - sounds considerably more inspired to say the least. One may accuse the band of playing pop dressed in metal, but just like good metal and bad metal music, there are better written pop tunes, and thankfully the songs sound much better this time round, and each track has some individual character. In fact, the whole album brings a darker sound, and some much welcomed bite. Just don't expect to feel the urge to hang your useless self-sort of darkness, nor the savage bite of a berserk werewolf equipped with whirring chainsaws. It is more of a brooding feel of yearning, or some sort of witch-like playfulness, depending on the track you're listening to, while the bite is more of a feisty feline one, which suits this type of music very well.

Despite being absent in the last record, Marco Hietala returns to lend his signature vocals to a couple of tracks, whereas George Oosthoek adds some unexpected harsh growls for that extra dimension that works well as opposed to being there for the sake of giving the beauty-and-the-beast formula a whirl. Newly minted Arch Enemy vocalist Alissa White-Gluz also makes an appearance to add more growls. Although that track does sound too simplistic for my tastes, it's hard to write an album with hits for every single track, right?

It's not as if Delain had done anything particularly crazy on this album. I am glad that they decided not to go down the route of having those mega-bombastic choir / orchestra productions, but the inspiration levels are clearly at an all-time high for the band, which has restored my faith in them as one of the elite female fronted acts.