Vuur
In This Moment We Are Free - Cities

Anneke van Giersbergen has a history of being part of great albums and also having one of the best rock/metal voices out there. So I guess it cannot be bad when she has gathered a band with some great Dutch musicians, including my favourite drummer Ed Warby, to make an album under a new moniker. Vuur released their debut album that revolves around cities on this globe, sort of a journey round the globe that starts in Berlin and ends in Paris. It is an album where Anneke tries to put her impressions of the different cities she has visited during here touring round the globe and it represent the duality of life in the city.

Musically it is not that far off what she did on her solo album Drive that I reviewed in 2013, at least in terms of style. It is hardrock with female vocals, but there are also clear traces of the things she have done before throughout, some progressive, some Gatheringish melancholy and so on. The eleven songs shows a relative variation, albeit not quite enough to keep it going for the entire duration of this album that feels quite long, which is true considering that the album is well over an hour long, which is really too long. Anneke sings well and the sound is rather good I think, a decent production I would claim.

This is probably the worst album Anneke has taken part in, and the same is probably true for the majority of the band. The album feels uninspired, it lacks drive and fire, I would describe it as mediocre. It isn’t bad, and some people will probably find it quite appealing but when you hear so many albums as I do and take time to actually listen to and review many of them it is hard to muster up much enthusiasm for an album completely without fresh ideas. We have heard this before and it has been done better plenty of times, therefore I can’t help thinking that this album should never have been done.

It isn’t really an exciting journey, it is probably one of those bad journeys when everything goes wrong, the hotels are bad, the food sucks and just about everything is really bad – but there is an adventure so there are some redeeming features, just like on this album. Unexpectedly bad I think, and not a journey I have enjoyed. Perhaps tossing the Vuur debut into the fire is the wisest choice, because then it would at least provide some heat in the winter cold.

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