This is the debut album from Behind Your Fear, a Gothic/melodic metal band from Germany.
Featuring current and ex-members of bands such as Crimson Moon and Flowing Tears, Anthropocene provides us with 47 minutes of quality tunes. It succeeds in taking cues from the past to deliver a satisfying interpretation of an older style.
This album is a big deal for me. I was a huge fan of the singer’s voice back in her Flowing Tears days, and it’s great to hear her vocals once more. Her performance here is as strong as I would have hoped, and she still has an exemplary command of emotion, power, and depth.
Richly atmospheric and lusciously textured, these songs display a range of influences across the album’s running time. Behind Your Fear play a form of Gothic metal that’s not a million miles away from that of Flowing Tears, spliced with some more modern dark rock elements. The end result is a very enjoyable and engaging collection of contemporary melodic metal tracks.
The songs are well-written and professional. The band clearly know their way around the style, and it’s an album filled with dark hooks and gorgeous emotive choruses. It’s not all about the singer though, as talented as she obviously is, as the rest of the band don’t mess around either; these songs have the full package to recommend themselves. There’s some top riffs here to bang your head along too, the drums are more nuanced than I was expecting, and you can even hear the bass.
Anthropocene is a very strong album. Regardless of whether you’re a Flowing Tears fan or not, Behind Your Fear offer a compelling work that should be sought out by any fan of bands such as Katatonia, Lacuna Coil, Leaves’ Eyes, Moonspell, Paradise Lost, Delain, and the like.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 