WITHIN TEMPTATION — Hydra (review)

Album · 2014 · Symphonic Metal

4/5 · 2014-02-19
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Hydra (2014) is the sixth full-length studio album by Dutch symphonic metal act Within Temptation. It was preceded by the EP Paradise (What About Us?) (2013) which presented its title track (which featured Tarja Turunen) as Hydra's lead single while also including three demo versions of songs that appear on Hydra. Hydra sees Within Temptation exploring various collaborations, and as well as Tarja they've been joined by former Killswitch Engage vocalist Howard Jones, Dave Pirner of the alternative rock band Soul Asylum, and rapper Xzibit.

Yes, a symphonic metal band collaborated with a rapper. On paper this is a recipe for disaster, regardless on your feelings about rap vocals. It might be all well and good for angst driven nu/alternative metal acts but for symphonic metal? Well believe it or not, and I'm covering the track in question, And We Run, first to prevent it becoming an elephant in the room, Within Temptation and Xzibit (who co-wrote the song) made a pretty good track here. Xzibit's rap doesn't even sound particularly out of place. Since I'm not a fan of rap vocals myself I can't say I really wanted to hear a rapper on a Within Temptation album of all things, but I appreciate this track in ways I never would have expected to in a million years. Perhaps if rap music itself was symphonic I'd even like it.

Okay, let's not go there and instead talk about the rest of Hydra. Since you know, there's nine other tracks here that don't feature any rapping at all.

Hydra is definitely mostly representative of how you'd expect a Within Temptation release to sound following an album like The Unforgiving (2011), which was unashamedly pop based. Pop metal is definitely a thing of current times and yeah, that's certainly going to rub a certain type of metalhead up the wrong way, but guess what? Pop metal is still hell of lot more interesting than that pure pop music you can hear on mainstream radio and Within Temptation are field leaders in the style; catchy songs, heavy riffs, guitar solos, epic orchestrations, and beautiful vocals from Sharon den Adel. The Unforgiving was their best album to date even. It still is if I'm honest. Hydra is still a high quality work, but it does come over as a step down compared to The Unforgiving.

The album does however bring back an element to a couple of songs that has been missing from Within Temptation's music since The Dance (1998) EP: growling. Again performed by guitarist Robert Westerholt, the growls are mostly heard within Silver Moonlight, which was one of the songs in demo form on the Paradise EP, but they're also heard in Tell Me Why. So while Hydra may continue to embrace pop, it does also show that Within Temptation haven't forgotten their early days entirely, although I'm not sure we're going to be hearing the gothic metal or death-doom of debut album Enter (1997) from them again anytime soon. Combined with Xzibit's rap and clean male vocals from both Howard Jones and Dave Pirner, what we do have here in Hydra is essentially one of the more varied Within Temptation releases.

I'm not really sure that Within Temptation needed four duets on the album, but two of them are easily highlights. Paradise (What About Us?), the title track from the prior EP and featuring Tarja Turunen is of course one of them, as Tarja is no doubt the most natural of the four collaborations for Within Temptation; she also produces symphonic metal, first with Nightwish and then as a solo artist. She and Sharon den Adel sound great together. I'm really not sure how any symphonic metal fan can say no to that. The other collaboration I really like is Dangerous, with Howard Jones. He sticks to his clean singing and I always thought he was one of the best metalcore singers, so I was actually excited by this collaboration to begin with and the results aren't a letdown in any way. The song itself is a fast paced one, shades of power metal in the riffs even, and insanely catchy.

What keeps my overall regard for Hydra a bit lower than Within Temptation's best work though, is not the rap during And We Run, but that a couple of other songs don't really stand out as well as they could have down. The final collaboration is the closing track, Whole World is Watching, with Dave Pirner (or if you own a Polish version, it's a singer called Piotr Rogucki instead, for some strange reason). It's a ballad type and seems a bit anti-climatic if I'm honest. It's driven primarily by acoustic guitar rather than the usual symphonic ballad Within Temptation does and while I haven't heard what Pirner's band Soul Asylum sounds like, I do know they're considered alternative rock, and that's really what this song sounds like. Other songs such as Covered by Roses don't captivate me the way their best work does. Dog Days is a good song but it does have an irritating lyric that goes: "one two three four what are you waiting for?". Obviously for me speaking personally And We Run could never be a favourite, but it's definitely not the weakest song here.

A step down from The Unforgiving it may be, but I'm impressed with the way Within Temptation continually make the effort to explore new ground, even when some of the things they do might further alienate fans of their older work. They still manage to put out a high quality symphonic metal album to my ears though and a four star rating is easily deserved.