Album review: DELAIN – Interlude

Interview edit: Charlotte Wessels of Delain, 1 May 2013
First broadcast on Get Ready to ROCK! Radio, 5 May 2013

The full version of this interview is available as a podcast
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Napalm Records [Release date 06.05.13]

Interlude is apt title for the Dutch symphonic rockers fourth release, as it marks their departure from Roadrunner and the mix of new songs, covers, new versions and live tracks serves as a past, present and future collective.

Five of the six live tracks, which make up half of the overall running time, are lifted from the band’s last album ‘We Are The Others’ and, in truth, come a little too close on the coat tails of that release. Yes, they’re excellent, but they stick so closely to the studio versions you’d have to query why anyone other than acolytes would want to invest.

In complete contrast, their revisiting of the title track from the same album and it’s conversion to a monster ballad, compete with children’s choir, adds a whole new dimension to the song which is well worth the indulgence.

As are three cover tracks, and you have to hand it to hand it to Charlotte Wesells and the band – they take two huge numbers from the eighties – Bronski Beat’s ‘Small Town Boy’, and Talk Talk’s ‘Such A Shame’, together with the 1996 lesser known Cranberries track ‘Cordell’ (a tribute to the late 1960s/early 1970s Moody Blues, The Move, Procol Harum and Joe Cocker producer) – chew then over and spit them out in their own style and one that would be almost unrecognisable to most. If you’re going to do a cover, at least try and make it you own. Delain do.

The three new numbers also ‘kick ass’, but it’s a fact that ‘symphonic’ rock is beginning to sound a little ‘dated’. As a female fronted rock band, Delain have all the attributes to go in any direction they choose and rise to the top of the pack. The critical question that must be posed of them is, ‘where to now?’ ****

Review by Pete Whalley

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