Whyzdom
Blind?

They ask us if we are blind? Maybe we are blind to what is going on, blinded by the pursuit of money and all of that shit, or maybe we like the band is missing something. Whyzdom is a French band that on paper or screen looks very interesting with a promise of a symphonic grande piece of music, female fronted and a Pan’s Labyrinth looking cover featuring maybe the daughter of the cellar monster. At least they have similar hands.

I think this is the first time I review a band that I have seen getting more than the highest rating on something they have released, and at the same site full marks for this and their debut album. I don’t really think that is an accurate rating though as I browsed around twenty five recent reviews at that site (some of which I have reviewed myself) and saw none with a rating lower than eight of ten which makes me believe that they overrate things quite heavily. I must admit that since we started this webzine I have never found one album that I without a doubt would set up as a full marks album on a scale of ten, there are two that might be but the other sevens I have given over five years probably does not deserve ten which is why we have a smaller scale as it makes it easier to rate and a few albums can get full marks. Anyway, that is of no real consequence for my review of this album, I browse other reviews to see which bands they compare with to make a good trio of similar bands.

I think I lost myself there in the beginning but overrating music annoys me as if this band was actually a full marker on a ten grade scale, what sets it apart from the other fifteen or twenty timeless classics that came the same year? Maybe the bombastic sound, the symphonies, the intricate song structures, the amazing production? Those are all impressive features of this album, the singer is also very good and fits perfectly into the musical framework that this band sets up, or the main composer and producer Vynce Leff sets up. One thing that disturbs me though is the vocalists accent which detracts a bit from the songs as it is slightly annoying, kind of like having a little pebble in your shoe. The albums also feature a strongly varied and dynamic sound and can be described a bit like Nightwish with a sound somewhere between Anette and Tarja. The album is also very long with a playing time well clear of the hour and eleven tracks.

From the get go they line up brilliant tracks, The Lighthouse, Dancing With Lucifer, Cassandra’s Mirror, On the Road to Babylon and Paper Princess which are all amazing to listen to and from the beginning I am thinking in terms of my sixth six point scorer and when just hearing the first track maybe even seven points. But after the first five tracks comes The Spider which sounds more or less the same as I have already heard on the album before and instead of keeping on being amazing I start to wait for it to end, which it never does. The album is very long which is detrimental, not that the second more than half is bad in any way, but there is only so much one want to hear before wanting to listen to something else and that so much is reached at the end of Paper Princess which by the way is a brilliant track, along with The Lighthouse the best on the album.

Mr Vynce Leff, have you ever heard the expression “less is more” or “kill your darlings” (or “murder your darlings” as the original expression was)? You make art, you should have so I don’t need to explain what it means but I will explain the symptoms that appear when I listen to this album. It starts amazingly and I am awed, even beginning to think of superlatives to use for the review I shall write when I have listened to this album for more than a thousand minutes it would show. After five tracks I am starting to listen for the ending, the perfect end that would leave you with this sensation that it is brilliant and I want more of it which signifies a great album. But instead this brilliant ending I imagine winds up a hurricane of symphonic metal delusions of grandeur and instead of being overjoyed I find myself slightly disappointed and a bit robbed of something amazing. Now I did put Venom and Frustration as track four and played through to the amazing track Paper Princess and this was brilliant, almost 40 minutes of pure musical joy which possibly could have ended up with seven points in a review by me. But as there was no darling killings, I instead ended up with a Hollywood movie type of record. Brilliant start then an ending that drags on forever just to end in disappointment.

So, I think this is a great album (that right now is on my top ten list of 2012) but it just could have been so much better if they had just remembered three very useful short words (which I clearly forgot today as well).