Sirenia
At Sixes And Sevens

THE REVIEW

"At sixes and sevens", undeniably, would never have been an undisputed masterpiece, even if "Widow's Weed", "Beyond the Veil", and "World of Glass" by Tristania had never existed. While several bands have shown us that originality is not an essential element to write good music, this lacks the poignant melancholy that must necessarily frame a gothic album: in this grandiose overlap of different musical elements, where electronics often dominate, the whole often suffers from a lack of impact.

Here there's a piano, but it doesn't sketch images of ancient landscapes in the listener's mind; there's the same romantic violin by Pete Johansen, but it fails to reach high emotional peaks; there are no poetic whispers from Vibeke Stene's angelic voice (guest vocalist Fabienne Gondamin's voice is certainly not one of the most expressive heard in a metal group, it's closer to pop than operatic tones and yet appears relatively little). The rest of the instruments build rhythms that are practically identical to those of Tristania's "Beyond the Veil". The song structure is trivial, and the compositional stagnation, in almost all tracks on the album, is only interrupted by the arrival of magnificent Gregorian chants (the only element that truly represents anything gothic here), which however do not uplift the album's overall fate. Certainly, chills down the spine occur listening to the notes of "Meridian", "Sister Nightfall", "On the Wane", and "At Sixes and Sevens" (masterpieces, impactful and evocative in their dark and dreamlike progression), and this is no small feat, but after hearing a copy of the same song for most of the album's duration, it's impossible not to get tired (moreover, from the third track, electronics become more insistent and, after that, the tones drop sharply and never rise again; only a few flashes here and there are saved).

A separate matter for the final track, "In Sumerian Haze", which seems to want to approach the world of electronic pop and dark music. Unfortunately, even in this case, nothing transcendental. Fortunately, the lyrics have retained that typical brilliance of Veland's style (something that Tristania, however, have lost).
Overall, the imaginary proposed here is something futuristic and apocalyptic, a kind of distant underwater world (emphasized by the aqua green tones of the booklet), which, for me, a lover of all forms of art that can be defined as gothic (including literature), seems slightly out of place. So, if, for example, with their dark theatricality, the early albums by Theatre of Tragedy, the vampiric airs of "Cruelty and the Beast" by Cradle of Filth, the funereal elegies of "Widow's Weeds" by the fantastic Tristania could be compared for their intense emotionality to gothic-romantic poems or novels, Sirenia's debut only approaches them from a distance.

The dark and dramatic emotions that the band leader once knew how to deliver with his songs have (unfortunately) been locked away, and who knows if Sirenia will ever manage to open that drawer in the future. Certainly, within the limits of gothic metal, which has accustomed us to much worse things, Sirenia will also be able to write good songs, but to be able to consider them as something indispensable, one truly needs to settle for little and regard music not as a deep emotional experience but as a pastime to fill gaps in a day. Nonetheless, faced with episodes like the first tracks of the album, the hope that the group might reserve surprises in the future will be slow to die.