Music: Epica – The Phantom Agony

Motto: A true work of art can be interpreted in more ways than one, since the creative human nature is so complex.


I remember my reaction when first listening to the title song of this album: "Grandiose. Who're they?". It took me 5 years to gather the necessary knowledge to write about Epica's debut album "The Phantom Agony".
The dominant atmosphere of the entire album is mystical and mysterious, yet colorful in the same time, just as the way young Arabian women look like: they show only their eyes or their faces, but their clothes are colorful and rich in patterns and their jewelry gorgeous, however what lies beneath all that fabric and color no one knows for sure. This is what "Adyta (The Neverending Embrace)" *tells* to the listener in the opening of the album. The last song of the album develops the intro's musicality and atmosphere to a maximum. Hence unveiling to the listener, in the same time the meaning of this dominant atmosphere and the title of the album: the atmosphere is "The Phantom Agony". Each song in its turn develops and explains a different façade of this vibrant atmosphere and shows another perspective of the Phantom's Agony. Therefore this album needs to be taken as a whole entity, each song is different and ties to the next one until the grandiose end.
This fact is also sustained by the various and different musical elements, which appear throughout the album:
- the choirs taken from the Classical and Gregorian music, which give, each time they appear a dramatic effect and create accents throughout the album's epic line
- the opulent rhythmic section appears as an echo of the choirs passages
- the classical instruments present give to the entire composition a precious aura and shine throughout the entire musical score like jewelry in the moonlight
- the Arabic musical elements, which have in this album more meanings than one: social (it is believed the Arabs have destroyed the *general peace* by killing so many innocents in terrorist attacks), cultural and musical (through the unique sound and color).
Eventually there comes the most obvious part: the singles, leading voices and with this the most obvious contrasts and the primary source for this album's special atmosphere. It is amazing how Mark's grunts are more expressive than Simone's voice and here appears a two level contrast, which, I don't know if it was searched for or was just the result of more lucky factors. But since in music the true talents, when combined bring out such contrasts into light, I tend to believe that this one of a kind contrast is the result of Mark's creativity and Simone's native voice and lack of experience. It is the only time I heard a vocal, without any technical training sound so good and natural (which is a contrast, since the technical singing teaches one to sing natural). But getting back to the two-level-contrast on the leading voices: by being so expressive in his grunts Mark is in contrast with Simone's linear voice, almost inexpressive. Throughout the album she shows almost no vocal expressivity and this is a very good thing, since the leading vocal score is so hard and jumps quickly from high notes to very low ones, becoming sufficient for itself through its notes. And here is where the second contrast appears, the extremely expressive musical background (sustained by all the elements listed above) and the simple, sincere, female voice, which sings the texts on each song. A very expressive, classical operatic voice would have failed badly on this album. Don't get me wrong, I am not against Simone, quite the contrary, she's one of my favorites and to be able to sing almost so natural at the age of 18 shows only that she is a natural.
After listening to the entire album, you'll just want to listen to it again and again and again and find various meanings of the Phantom's Agony, from the social aspects to each musical meaning… and in the end the feeling that dominates is that it fits just right next to Nightwish's "Century Child", Kamelot's "Epica", Trail of Tear's "A New Dimension of Might" and Tristania's "World of Glass", just to state a few albums close to "The Phantom Agony"'s release.