Xandria “Salomé the seventh veil” review (english)

The members of the band Xandria from Bielefeld (Germany) have been working hard these past months and I have the result right in front of me: Their new and fourth album named “Salomé – the seventh veil”.

It comes along with an oriental cover and the promise of 49 minutes of exotic entertainment and I will now point out to you how this promise is being kept. The first song  is “Save my life”. You can listen to it for free on the official Xandria- myspace.  To me it sounds like a typical Xandria song, just the way you would expect after the predecessor “India”, even though there are some changes to discover.  Turns out that the Xandrians abandoned the old synthesizer and decided to rely more on their guitars, resulting in a more rocking style of music and the loss of the anthem – overload of “india”. The second new song “Vampire” is a bit more surprising for the experienced Xandria- listener than the opener was. Lisa is exploring unexpected dephts with her voice – when I first heard it I approached my ear to the speakers to convince myself of this in fact being Lisa singing! Well done, Lisa! It sounds really vampiric and I really like the song!

“Beware” is the third track of the album. Its melody totally puts you in a good mood, which I like, but I have to add that I don’t think the melody matches the topic of the song. !Beware! I’ ll be the one to take you under…” is not something I would chirp happily into the mike…

However the song is basically pretty cool and followed by the song “Emotional Man”. It is a very rocking and melodious one. I especially love the intermission, in which Lisa and the Finn Mikka Tauriainen of the band “Entwine” talk. One might say it sounds hypnotic or so. The song deals with the topic of admiring stars and having a wrong image of them in mind, which has been made up by the media.

The next one is the theme song “Salomé”. It is the first rather calm track of the album, which matches its topic perfectly, as it is a bit sad. It is a monologue of the dancing Salomé, who is very unhappy about her role in the story, feeling exposed during her dance and losing her dignity along with her veils. The lyrics are amazing and althoug I’ m not that much into the quiet songs I like this one because of its great oriental ambience.

 “Only fort he stars in your eyes” – also available on the official myspace – is the promised duet of Lisa with Mikka Tauriainen. The song definitely rocks, the only thing that keeps bugging me is that his voice is higher than hers… because in this song Lisa again tries a new singing style which I tend to describe as dark, oozing… lascivious… sounds great anyway! 

„Firestorm“ is the next track. It might contain the passage German magazine “Orkus” related to when stating that the album even contained growls by Lisa. Sadly the growling only consists of 4 words: “I will burn you!” and they sound like they have been strongly remodeled with a computer. However the song is pure rocking Xandria!

Lisa Middelhauve and Marco Heubaum

 After the “Firestorm” the world is ready for “A new age”. The song sounds to me like somebody mixed a rap song with “Seven nation army” by the white stripes and some Xandria. After that, the listener gets to relax to the sounds of “The wind and the ocean”. This is a genuine ballad, which I  sadly find a little boring and  uninspired. Especially the clinging at the end has been heard before.  Well, the album had to have one  flaw … Luckily the successor “Sisters of the light” (myspace!) makes it up to us. The song is amazing with a catchy melody that could become a club hit! The ambience reminds me a bit of “Walk like an egyptian”! “Sleeping dogs lie” is the next catchy tune that makes your dog rock along with you.

The tail light of the album is named „On my way“. But it does not need to hide behind the other songs, because it is just great! Lisa once again impresses the listeners with her varied singing styles, proving her high flexibility as a singer!

As a conclusion I can totally recommend this “new and different” Xandria CD – also to the ones who felt that the former album “India” was a bit too calm for them. Thumbs up!!

By the way, Xandria got themselves a website- makeover, too, to make it go with the album cover style. 

Here is the new video of the song “Save my life”, which surprisingly does not adapt to the oriental style of the album cover and website: