Nemesea
Mana

I tried to get emotionally involved with this album; twice it turned out to be a failed attempt. I thought only Xandria were capable of such obscenities, but apparently, I was wrong.

A ridiculous and poorly executed imitation of After Forever's first two albums. This is a summary in a few words of the content of this "Mana," debuting in 2005 for Nemesea, yet another Dutch band dedicated to atmospheric and vaguely progressive gothic metal that has been so popular in recent years. If the more curious find these few lines insufficient, it takes little to lay out the basic elements of the recipe proposed here: omnipresent symphonic keyboards that never become memorable, corroded by amateurish sounds that even become annoying, rhythms so close to ridicule, and a celestial and operatic female voice pretending to create a relationship between the world of gothic metal and classical music.

For heaven's sake, I have nothing to say against Manda Ophuis's abilities, the author of dazzling vocalizations and the only true element of value within the band. However, I wonder why such a gifted girl persists in wanting to imitate Floor Jansen and, in calmer passages, Anneke Van Giersbergen. In so doing, even her performance cannot help but be overshadowed, because the voices of her colleagues are unique and, above all, inimitable: any attempt at emulation sounds gaudy and ridiculous to my ears. It should also be said that, despite her talents, Manda is neither capable of changing style as suddenly as Floor, nor does she have a particularly warm and enveloping timbre like Anneke. Her range is often limited to high notes, to which she clings for almost the entire duration of the album.

In my opinion, the only passable episode is "From beneath you it devours." For the rest, perhaps also due to a very poor production, even the few songs that seem to have the potential to create a hint of emphasis, like the rhythmic and epic "Threefold law" and the appreciable semi-ballad "Angel in the dark," fail to emerge from this cauldron of relentless and barbaric musical poverty. The attempts to write songs straddling prog, power, and gothic metal inspired by the genius of After Forever ("Empress", "The taker"), instrumentals ("Moriendum tibi est"), or pop ("Cry") are atrocious. If the magical touch is also provided by lyrics written in banal English surrounded by some completely ungrammatical Latin verses, which perhaps aim to give it a more mystical and esoteric aura, by pseudo-operatic choirs interspersed throughout the six-piece's performance, and by randomly inserted electronic pieces, then we can only speak of a total disaster.

I don't think I will ever have the courage to listen to this album again. To think that someone could even slightly be interested in a record like this or even appreciate it, when masterpieces like "Decipher" and "Invisible circles," as well as well-executed and undoubtedly much more pleasant confirmations of the same style, have been available on the market for a long time, is grotesque and unpleasant, to say the least.