Cardamon - The Primrose Path
CD Info
2007
Self-Released
11 Tracks
English Lyrics
Cardamon is a gothic metal band from Netherlands and this is their first disc. The Primrose Path sounds like the disc that The Gathering might have made between Nighttime Birds and How to Measure a Planet?. A little less than half of the songs are heavy, riffy, groovy melancholy gothic metal and the rest are warm, atmospheric, melodic rock, though a few songs feature a mix of both styles. The gothic metal songs have a strong focus on catchy, crunchy, rocking riffs with thick, warm bass and simple vocal melodies, extremely reminiscent of Mandylion and Nighttime Birds; the melodic rock songs are often largely acoustic with pleasant and somewhat meandering melodies and vocal lines, reminiscent of How to Measure a Planet?.
Their female vocalist, Floortje Donia, sounds remarkably like Anneke van Giersbergen did on the earlier The Gathering discs, with a smooth, easy, musical singing style. She has a fairly narrow range but within it she is strong and confident and infuses every song with warmth and emotion. Her style, in particular, is the perfect complement to the groovy gothic metal songs and reminds us that The Gathering did not exhaust the possibilities of this genre in their early days.
The problem with The Primrose Path is the uneven song-writing. There are four excellent songs, namely, Echoe, When Space and Time Collide, Never a Tear, and Evening; it is not a coincidence that all of these songs are gothic metal songs with catchy, engaging riffs and memorable melodies. The rest of the songs, however, the melodic rock ones, are generally rather bland, non-descript and unmemorable, even tedious at times, although if you are a huge fan of How to Measure a Planet? then you may find these songs much more involving than I do. Cardamon has considerable talent in writing catchy gothic metal and I hope they focus on this on their next disc; if so I would like to be the first to hear it.
For more information visit the band’s MySpace site http://www.myspace.com/cardamon or www.cardamon.nl
6.0 / 10