Hey Hivers.

Today is the 13th anniversary of the international release of one of the most formative albums in my musical upbringing: April Rain by Dutch symphonic metal outfit Delain.

Now 13 isn’t a particularly significant number, but I wanted badly to get started talking about music like I’ve been ‘planning’ to do for years now, so we’re calling this mess a review.

I also wanted to record a video, but my nerves seem to need some time to warm up to talking into a microphone. There are several other upcoming anniversaries that are quite important to me, so we’ll see how that goes.

Now.

April Rain

For the sake of simplicity, I’ve split this review into three parts, in order of how much I care about them: mood, technicality, and lyricism.

Mood

April Rain does an excellent job of inducing the vibe its name suggests: It calls to mind stormy skies and rain dripping from the leaves of flowers. The title track in particular does this very well, with its quite prominent horns before the main groove hits. The vocal harmonies in the chorus really bring this feeling out, being almost more memorable than the main melody. This turns out to be a bit of a them for this album.

Other tracks of note are Start Swimming and bonus track Come Closer, both on the slower side, and both with the same melancholy tone as the title track. Start Swimming can still move me with its simple but hard-hitting chord progression over the chorus (with more of those stellar harmonies and a guest appearance from an almost theremin-like voice in the right channel alongside the second stanza), and Come Closer brings a beautiful close to the album with some slower, soaring strings behind the band and excellent dynamic arrangement.

This album has stuck around for me not because it’s technically impressive (it’s really not), but because of the things it was able to make me feel. Few albums in my listening history have been able to make me cry, and April Rain tops the list.

Performance and Production

While not a masterfully performed set of songs, April Rain is written with some restraint by the musicians seemingly for the sake of frontlining Wessel’s vocals and invoking the rainy vibe mentioned above.

That said, there are some interesting things to note about the production of this album. Most notably, the drums seem to be recorded in an almost haphazard manner. The pieces of the kit don’t seem to have set places in the stereo soundscape, instead moving about as the mixing engineer sees fit. The hi-hats switch sides (there could be two sets, sure), there’s a ride almost in the center (sometimes), and what sounds like a 14 inch crash and a china both far off to the right, almost directly overtop a pair of hi-hats. But only sometimes. Just odd.

Another thing of note is a distinct lack of bass tone. There’s obviously a bass guitar on the record, but only rarely did I get a hint of rattle or distortion. Having listened to this album for 13 years, I can be fairly confident in saying that most playback systems (read: your EarPods) likely won’t reproduce this at all.

Most everything else sounds quite good. Charlotte sits on top of the mix. Harmonies and guitars are double-tracked, and at least the snare and kick drums stay put.

Lyrics

Every song on the record focuses on some aspect of the human condition, such as regret, discontent, fear of loneliness and letting go of relationships, forgiveness, and in the case of April Rain the track, positive attitude.

To be quite honest, lyrics aren’t the reason I listen to music. In preparing this review, I discovered several lines I’ve been hearing wrong since release.

Conclusion

I would hate to give this album a rating, because I couldn’t rate it as highly as my opinion of it calls for. 2 parts nostalgia, 3 parts great album.

Perhaps I’ve just lost my ability to be wowed by it, in which case I encourage you to go get wowed yourself.

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash