Within Temptation - Resist

Okay, wow. I didnt think was going to be getting another pop-infused metal album so soon after Bring Me the Horizon’s amo, a premise I must again clarify that I have nothing against. I enjoyed a lot of the passionate performances on amo even amid the sugary sweet trendy pop elements and basic formats, because they were well-tempered and written and performed with tangible passion at heart. But Resist on the other hand… Wow, this album is such a confused and largely ineffective mess!

The band had stated before the delayed release of the album that it was something they wanted to try blending some pop elements of their sound with without losing the visceral bombast of their symphonic glory, and it seems like they kind of tried to do that, but moreso kept their original sound from overpowering the pop elements being introduced. Consequently, the band’s symphonic edge both takes a bit of a back seat and actually ends up highlighting the worst aspects of the album’s pop-ification by simply adding another layer of cheesy, gaudy obnoxiousness to the already over-produced (and very poorly produced at that) slathering of knock-off-ish electropop elements.

The viable energy Bring Me the Horizon brought to the bold move that amo was was at least enough to conjure a few highlights and make even the many lesser moments at least bearable for the band’s clear zeal and focused intent. But Within Temptation sound utterly desperate for some kind of reason for what they’re doing, like they’re still plagued by the writer’s block that prolonged the creation of this thing. They sound so unsure of what they’re doing and unsure of what feelings to even chase that they sound like they’re just apathetically probing for answers, almost the entire time. The trendy pasting of modern electro pop rock wallpapering over the simplistic songs on here honestly had me feeling like I was sitting through an Imagine Dragons album at times.

The one diamond in the ruft in all this cacophonous, annoying drivel is the song, “Mad World”, which I was worried was going to be a disastrous rendition of the Tears for Fears song. Thankfully that’s not what it was, and thankfully it brings five minutes of confidence and booming invigoration to an album drowning in uncertainty, lethargy, and tastlessly applied pop production. It has all the things that show up in spades that ruin the rest of the songs on the album, but with “Mad World” the band actually arranges everything nicely into a triumphant, mid-paced, electro-hard-rocker, that they unfortunately couldn’t replicate the lightning in a bottle of.

I’d really rather not go into every song on here lest I end up redundantly criticising the mediocrity and lack of vision or energy of each piece that so solidly characterizes the album. But I feel like I should at least point out the most exemplary moments on here that showcase my points. “Endless War” is one particular song where the band’s ordinarily emphatic symphonic grandness is turned into a mere background element that only gives the song a cheesily try-hard cinematic feel, nearly sounding like those corny arena pop rock “woahs” I hate so goddamn much. The more heavily electro-tinged “Supernova” is another one of the songs whose basic-ass pop structuring and generic pop production makes its excessive length a real chore to sit through. Oh but the song “Holy Ground” especially had me feeling like I was listening to an Imagine Dragons song, but with Halsey at the mic, with Sharon den Adel’s slightly hip hop-esque vocal delivery in the verses. The annoying, repetitive melodies though are what sink the song like a lead cannonball. The verses and choruses of “In Vain” are top 40 as shit too, and only in the sense that they share the same predictability and bland mix of sonic elements that reveal what little the song has to offer within a minute, making the remaining three-and-a-half nothing more than redundant wait time for the next track. But then that next song is “Firelight”, which features this absolutely aggravating repeated vocal sample doing this “woah-oo woah-oo” all throughout the song, which already has no energy at all to overcome it.

There were a few very brief flourishes of the glory that got Within Temptation as far as they are now. The symphonic pop rock power ballad “Mercy Mirror” at least feels a little bit emotive and the song “Trophy Hunter” ends the album on a pretty solid note reminiscent of the orchestrally epic and towering Within Temptation of old. But the fleeting moments of emotive glory the band are able to gasp out are so greatly obscured by the clutzy overproduction with the most default glitzy pop elements that clog up the bulk of the album, with five of the ten songs being utterly, unbearably inept, and only a couple of songs near the end tipping the scales in the other direction, though amounting to too little too late by the album’s finish. The style really isn’t the problem, as the few moments of clarity showed, but the band’s poor handling of the new pop flavors they tried out didn’t do nearly enough of what it should have, and overall, the vast majority of these songs do nothing for me.

Clear the roadblock, don’t try to go around it/10