As always, her delivery is completely effortless and smooth, and that combined with a sweetened conventional (not operatic) tone makes for a more intelligible and highly affecting performance. My oh my what more needs to be said on Charlotte Wessels' vocals? Her voice is just so lovely in every sense of the word. They work brilliantly in unison with the guitars to provide the perfect sugary sweet back drop, one which gels very well with, you guessed it. They are the primary carriers of melody in the music, but unlike before the guitars follow the keyboard lines they lay down, making this the most overtly melodic of Delain's studio efforts. The keyboards are present as ever, but play second fiddle to the guitars. As a result the album has the added dimension of heaviness to it, as well as catchiness and beauty. However, unlike before, the riffs are more up-front than ever, and thus there are several moments on this album that qualify as genuinely heavy, like most of the opening volley 'Here Come the Vultures' as well as 'Your Body is a Battleground'. The guitar here is downtuned and plays a set of churning driving groove riffs and chugging that like always give the songs some sort of bounce and energy to the songs when needed. The riffs are the best the band has written to date, rivaling those found on Lucidity. While this album does keep with the emphasis on the guitars over the keyboards, it moves away from the alt-rock side of things that was explored before in favour of a heavier and more driving goth metal-tinged sound. Both April Rain and We Are the Others, for all their obvious charm and beauty, represented musical simplifications to the point where the latter could be likened to a better, keyboard-laden Evanescence with few eyebrows raised. However more importantly, it shows some sort of genuine stylistic progression by the band beyond streamlining. As far as I'm concerned they deserve all the exposure they can get, having released 4 nearly flawless albums in a row and thus being one of the most consistent symphonic metal bands out there. For one, they're gaining more and more traction in terms of notability, no longer 'that band by the Within Temptation dude's brother' but instead one of the better second-tier acts in this field.
The Human Contradiction is a comforting and reassuring album, not only due to the content within but because of what it means for the band and their music.
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