Rhapsodies In Black by Exit Eden : My (unlikely) Favourite Album of 2017
It feels anathema to choose a covers album over every original piece of work that came out this year (especially in a year that gave us tons of great music) but this is the one I keep coming back to, the one that makes me feel the deepest reaction, the one that repeatedly takes my breath away. This, frankly, is the sound in my heart.
Let me justify my love…
I spend a lot of time on metal news websites and I’d say my least favourite articles are the ones that are all “Check out an incredible metal cover of this euro-disco anthem!” It’s so clickbaity and the appeal seems to be just the incongruity of it all. The assumption is that you probably didn’t like the song before but now you can, either ironically as a joke, or because it’s been made into metal. Musical snobbery sucks enough as it is, but worse is that the ‘unexpected’ cover almost always wrecks what was originally a great song and turns it to novelty (the same applies going backwards incidentally — classic metal songs reworked on the ukulele/noseflute/cat are rarely any good either).
Personally, I love metal and I love pop and I guess some people think these things are poles apart. I mean, beyond being Scandinavian and two of my favourite songs ever, what do ABBA’s Dancing Queen and Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger have in common, right? One is lavishly produced, drenched in harmony, disco beats and shimmering piano. The other is as raw as it comes; dissonant guitars buzzsawing their way across primitive, trancelike rhythms. And yet both appeal to the same receptors in my brain. Both have an undeniable intensity. The emotions they’re conveying — while very different — are all turned up to the highest level. They’re also both extremely catchy (c’mon, that riff at the start of Transilvanian Hunger? Probably the catchiest in the history of black metal!). Understanding this fundamental relationship between intense high drama and catchy melodies seems to be the key to unlock my musical heart.
Let me hand you over to someone who can word it better. The Girls by Emma Cline (weirdly enough, my favourite novel this year) has a paragraph in which its protagonist reminisces about listening to music as a teenage girl in early 1960s:
“Connie stood at the mirror and tried to harmonize with one of the sweet sorrowful forty-fives we listened to with fanatic repetition. Songs that overheated my own righteous sadness, my imagined alignment with the tragic nature of the world. How I loved to wring myself out that way, stoking my feelings until they were unbearable. I wanted all of life to feel that frantic and pressurized with portent, so even colors and weather and tastes would be more saturated. That’s what the songs promised, what they trawled out of me.”
And yeah. That’s me. That’s what I want out of music.
When I saw Exit Eden existed my first thought was “err, no thank you, not today”. They’re a supergroup of four symphonic metal singers — Amanda Somerville, Clémentine Delauney, Marina La Torraca and Anna Brunner — who’ve come together to release an album of pop songs covered in a metal style. It sounded like it would be half-hearted rehashes at best, or a smug nightmare of ironic winking (and if you’ve ever woken from a nightmare of ironic winking, you’ll know they’re the worst kind). And yet here I am, a few months later, writing a blog about why it’s my favourite album of 2017.
First of all, there’s not a hint of irony. It’s sincere to the point of outright earnestness. It takes pop songs — mostly ones that are already quite dark and romantic — and dials up the existing emotion to about as high as it can go. Matching that is the production/arrangement. The vocal harmonies are spectacular and know exactly which point in the song to go big. There’s four great singers here, all with deceptively diverse styles of singing, and when they come together for a massive chorus, it’s speaker-shatteringly immense. And when four voices aren’t quite enough to make Adele’s Skyfall as apocalyptic as it was always meant to sound, Simone Simons from Epica lends her sky-high soprano skills to the mix.
Symphonic metal’s a “big” sounding genre anyway but Rhapsodies In Black graduates with honours from the Jim Steinman School of Everything Louder Than Everything Else. It sounds like not one person in the studio ever went “rein that in, will you?” or “could you dial it down a notch?” and man, that’s some intensity. Of course, that’s making it seem like it’s easy to just supersize your sound, which it isn’t. This always walks a perfect line of pushing things as extra as they’ll go without ever sounding overproduced, clumsy or busy. It’s an immaculate job.
But a covers album’s only as good as its song choices and these ones are perfect. From 80s synthpop like A Question of Time (Depeche Mode) and Fade To Grey (Visage), up to modern bangers like Firework (Katy Perry) and Paparazzi (Lady Gaga), it’s nothing short of uncanny how much they sound like they should have been symphonic metal tracks to begin with. Musically and lyrically, the songs just slot right in with the genre (and it’s interesting how something like A Question Of Time’s meaning can be so cleverly subverted simply by virtue of being sung by the opposite sex). It’s frightening how well they bring out the real songwriting quality even in something like Incomplete by The Backstreet Boys, which I’d have otherwise dismissed as an asinine ballad. Of course, it’s also impressive how deep into pop’s oeuvre they’re diving to pull out a song like that in the first place. It’s coming from a place of love.
Surprisingly, when they take on songs that I already love dearly, they nail that too. When I saw they’d chosen Total Eclipse Of The Heart (a song that in its original form is sheer perfection) I was mortified, but they make it soar; losing the gothic organs, chopping it down to a more conventional pop song structure and adding some heavy riffage and powerhouse drumming. The lead vocal from Amanda Somerville gives Bonnie Tyler a run for her money in the belting stakes and the backing harmonies are sublime. It’s so hard to capture the spirit of a track like that yet Exit Eden do it perfectly. Emotionally, it’s the same heart-rending song, even if the arrangement is all new (and arguably more upbeat).
The only real blip is Bryan Adams’ Heaven. It’s technically fine but the source material is weak and it feels schmaltzy and ersatz compared with the rest of the great pop songs here (interestingly, Adams is the only artist covered here who’s technically more “rock” in the first place which may explain why it works less). Still, it’s countered by a couple of serious standouts that are endlessly addictive. The heavy take on Shontelle’s heartbreak ballad Impossible is magnificent. It’s an irresistible earworm; all soaring choruses, one flawless key change and wrenching sadness. Likewise, their version of early Rihanna ballad Unfaithful is a barnstormer. They keep the tempo and the vocal melody the same but just throw in some raging guitar and a driving rhythm to pump the song up. It’s like symphonic steroids.
I get that some metal fans will struggle with this album’s unashamed devotion to the art of the pop song and some pop fans will be baffled by the operatic vocals and the crunchy guitars. Everyone looks for different things in music and when music is as heightened and open-hearted as Exit Eden’s, it’s likely to inspire some pretty strong reactions in both directions. For me though, this is what I’m here for. It’s absolutely perfect. It’s the kind of music that makes life exciting.
