Within Temptation
The Unforgiving

It's not easy to maintain productive rhythms and quality at the same time. The Within Temptation, a Dutch heavy metal band with multiple influences, confirms that they manage to do so excellently, managing to stay afloat very well in an increasingly full and inflated genre.

The Unforgiving is the fifth album by the group in fourteen years of a dazzling career, dotted with successes, sold-out concerts all over the world, and a loyal fan base since their beginnings.

The Unforgiving is also an atypical album: born as a concept album, it is a work much more similar to a soundtrack than to an actual album, and it was released simultaneously with a series of comics and short films that complete the work. The majesty of Within's music indeed fits well with the atmospheres typical of the seventh art, and even if at first, it may be bewildering, the concept idea proves to be certainly winning for its originality.

After an excellent album like The Heart of Everything, it wasn't easy to find new confirmation as Our Friends have masterfully managed with the twelve tracks (plus various bonuses and wonderful acoustic versions) that compose this album: from the first listen, one notices the first changes compared to previous albums, the pop twist is indeed accentuated and winks at very catchy and captivating choruses, the single Faster, the first forerunner of the album, is a track decidedly more similar to What Have You Done than to the band's more metal works, a vein that here has been partially (but only partially) abandoned.

Epicness and majesty reign supreme, and the listener is accompanied by Sharon den Adel's voice in this tale where the feeling of being in a comic or a movie is tangible: the vocal introduction of Why Not Me is immediately followed by the rhythmic Shot in the Dark (announced as the third single), a track with electronic influences, where the guitars open only in the chorus, to then make a big comeback in The Middle of the Night and the aforementioned Faster. Fire And Ice is the first ballad of the disc, moving and touching like the pivotal scene of a film. Iron more so echoes the band's heavier songs, while Where is the Edge and Sinéad are the most elegant tracks on the whole album, where the strings complete the classic fabric of voice-guitar-bass, and drums.

Lost, the second ballad, opens with just the guitar, and the last three tracks, Murder among them, are a manifesto of the new sound proposed in this album: aggression and electronics complementing the guitars.

Ultimately, this is an album that can make many people turn up their noses if they expected confirmation of the potential expressed in The Heart of Everything, which is certainly much superior.

The Unforgiving is instead merely a highly appreciable concept, in which the band freely roams strong in its abilities while awaiting the next true album. Three and a half stars, which can easily be rounded up to four.