Amaranthe - "The Catalyst"
I say it often, and I’ll say it again: the Metal supergenre is vast. There are so many unique styles and sounds contained under its umbrella, whether innovated or imported, and the recent trend of genre blending promises to create even more. Even with all of the space that Metal has spread out to encompass, there’s still a lot of competition within the space between bands with similar sounds. Standing out is always a challenge.
Amaranthe has dealt with this in a fairly unique way — by blending several disparate Metal genres and maintaining three vocalists1 to handle it. That’s half the band on vocals!
That atypical balance is utilized to great effect, though. While Ryd, who has been with the band since its inception, is still clearly the frontwoman, each vocalist helps to carry the weight which give their music a greater sense of momentum. When the energy is up, it stays up.
And it’s up for the vast majority of The Catalyst’s 39-minute runtime.
In terms of style and genre, if I had to limit Amaranthe’s classification to just one label, it would be Symphonic Metal. But applying just the one would be a crude disservice to the band’s eclectic sound, which also utilizes Melodic Death Metal, Power Metal, Metalcore, and Electronicore.
From the moment that opening and title track “The Catalyst” kicks off, Amaranthe is in high gear, and they only slow it down once, for track 7, “Stay a Little While” (twice if you want to count the first verse of closer “Find Life”). As a result, the vast majority of these songs are fun, high-octane additions to any playlist — bops guaranteed to get the party bouncing or headbanging or just help you power through whatever chores you’re tackling at the time.
As a unit, though, the album kind of blurs and, despite the energy, becomes a bit stale. None of the 12 tracks break the four-minute mark, and the delta between shortest and longest is just 44 seconds. This gives Amaranthe’s compositional approach for the album an unfortunate formulaic feel that you don’t often find on Metal albums.
And there isn’t any immediately-obvious throughline.
I do find The Catalyst to be a highly-enjoyable collection of songs, and the band’s comprehensive talent and vision is on full display, but the album, itself, lacks direction, purpose, and organization. It’s all unchanneled energy, which is phenomenal in small bursts, but doesn’t work as a whole.
Rating: Green
Vocalists are:
Female clean: Elize Ryd
Male clean: Nils Molin
And (male) harsh vocals: Mikael Sehlin