German symphonic metallers Beyond The Black combine beauty and ballast to occasionally spectacular effect on third album Break The Silence.
Jennifer Haben is a born superstar. Once a shy virtuoso from St. Wendel in southwestern Germany, Beyond The Black’s powerhouse vocalist has wholly come into herself over the last few years.
Owning massive main stages at Wacken and Graspop and holding her own alongside icons like Sharon den Adel, Tarja Turunen and Floor Jansen has been just part of that coming of age. So, too, have stints co-hosting on hit German TV show Sing meinen Song and Amazon Music, learning to integrate personal passions like fashion, theatre or video games into her performance, and finding the confidence to truly enjoy being the centre of attention. Which makes it all the more confounding that she so often seems to be fighting for space on BTB’s topsy-turvy third album Break The Silence.
Opening track and lead-single Rising High sets the uneven tone, opening with 35 seconds of down-and-dirty bar room rock and uncredited, non-lyrical male vocals before Jennifer arrives to weave her symphonic magic. The title-track is stronger, with vocals racing alongside a rollercoaster composition like classic Nightwish – although the repetitive chorus isn’t half as hooky as it needs to be. Then we’re into straight into back-to-back guest spots. Lord Of The Lost’s Chris Harms layers on the goth-rock for The Art Of Being Alone, before female vocal choir The Mystery Of The Hungarian Voices provide a fascinatingly chirpy counterbalance for otherwise stomping epic Let There Be Rain.
It’s not until mid-album highlight Ravens that Jennifer is allowed to fully spread her wings. A heartfelt hymn to the loyalty of fans with eerily minimalist instrumentation, anything lacking in steely metallic edge is more than made up for by sheer passion and stirring clarity of purpose.
Rather than settling into a groove, however, the second half of the Break The Silence ramps up the momentum in almost crazed manner, ricocheting from the retro-futurist snarl of The Flood via the quirkily widescreen (La vie est un) Cinéma to the brilliantly wibbly-wobbly electro-rock of Hologram. LOVEBITES leader Asami even drops in for the gleefully synth-streaked Can You Hear Me. Not once is there any danger boredom, but as Jennifer hogs the limelight again on glassy, organ-driven, ultimately uplifting German-language closer Weltschmerz (roughly, ‘World-weariness’) it’s just that bit more captivating. At moments like those, you can’t help but wonder whether less is more.
Verdict: 3/5
For fans of: Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Nightwish
Break The Silence is out now via Nuclear Blast
