riseagainstrocks

Wuthering Heights - Metal-Archives

[Another re-appropriation of a review I wrote in 2015. It honestly baffles me how this band is not world-renowned. Anyone with a passing interest in power metal should give this a spin.]


Wuthering Heights is firstly known as an Emily Brontë novel and perhaps secondly as a Kate Bush song. I’ve always found the former to be an overpraised tragedy and the latter to simply be tragic, so my initial thought upon first being recommended a band that took their name from such inauspicious sources was frankly, derisive. I’ve been wrong before and I know I’ll be wrong again, but I don’t think I’ll ever be so terribly incorrect in the future. Wuthering Heights deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Blind Guardian, Helloween, and Gamma Ray; nay, it deserves to precede that list of power metal majesty. Bluntly stated, Wuthering Heights is the greatest power metal band. Period. The end.

Now that the effusive praise for the band is out of the way, let’s move on to why I worship their fourth full-length, The Shadow Cabinet. From the opening strains of “Demon Desire” it’s obvious you’re listening to something special. The rolling piano scales, the jaunty and frantic pace, the absolutely soaring vocals of a god walking amongst mere mortals, Nils Patrick Johansson, everything immediately crystalizes into the perfect expression of what all power metal aspires to. The flawless pacing of the song carries the listener forward with mounting anticipation for what’s to come. Sticking with “Demon Desire”, the quirky, almost folkish guitar and keyboard break at 3:29 serves as the hors d'oeuvre for the sweet, but never saccharine, feast to follow.

Emotions run rampant all through The Shadow Cabinet. From the melancholic and resentful strains of “Beautifool” to the self-righteous anger and barely disguised fury of “I Shall Not Yield”, guitarists Martin Arendal and Erik Ravn, band leader and primary composer for Wuthering Heights, paint with delicate, purposeful strokes. Victory riffs mingle with chords of desperation, running the gauntlet of man’s experience in love, war, death, and self-discovery. The primary lead of “Faith – Apathy Divine Part 1” is simple, but it possesses an ethereal quality that won’t quite leave the mind. Effortless transitions between classic Swedish/Danish folk melodies, German thrash riffing, and even some NWOBHM tinkering flow inter and intra-song. This is the first of two advantages Wuthering Heights has over their power metal brethren: the dynamic shifts and clever exploration of all the electric guitar has to offer is impossible to overstate.

The second advantage Wuthering Heights possesses is the vocal chords of the divine Nils Patrick Johansson. His mastery of both the gruff, leather spikes and attitude style and the soaring, I mean truly soaring, power of his upper range must be heard to be believed. He’s a vocal chameleon, shifting from verse to verse as dictated by his own artistic genius and Ravn’s outstanding composition. “Envy” provides one of the best examples of Johansson’s range and control. Draped over the music like some velvet sheet studded with the occasion metal spike, he regularly dances through several octaves without losing an ounce of authority. “I Shall Not Yield” shows that he could make a great death metal vocalist with the 30 second growling ‘break’ that flows into the final climatic crescendo. I have no problem putting Nils Patrick Johansson in the same category as Freddie Mercury, Hansi Kürsch, Brad Delp, or Andre Matos – with an emotional soul underlying every word, every crooned or spat phrase, Johansson belongs in the pantheon of all-time best rock/metal singers.

Bassist Teddy Möller, drummer Morten Gade Sørensen, and keyboardist Andreas Lindahl serve as the perfect backing band to the pyrotechnic guitar and vocal work. Sørensen’s drumming gallops through most of the song, adding subtle cymbal hits and the occasional 2-bar blast beat as emphatic punctuation when necessary. As with all metal bands, the bass is a bit buried in the mix. However, with a nice pair of stereo headphones, one can hear Möller’s frenetic playing keeping up the labyrinthian guitar melodies. Bass is an instrument that doesn’t often make its presence known, but its absence would be keenly felt. For Wuthering Heights, the richness of their sound would be harmed without Möller’s steady fingers cleverly holding his own in the midst of such intricate song structures. Finally, the atmospheres Andreas Lindahl creates add the perfect amount of tension and/or relief to such an emotionally complex album. His moody miasma is most obvious on the ‘skit’ track “Reason…?” but there are flourishes and background chords permeating the record, adding yet another piece to the sonic tapestry.

If The Shadow Cabinet has a misstep it’s the song “Sleep”. While not a bad track by any means, and yet another vehicle for Johansson to prove his dominance, it’s not close to the quality of the other songs (“Reason…?” is not included as it’s essentially an extended intro for “Carpe Noctem”), any one of which bands like Blind Guardian or Falconer would have been thrilled to write. Speaking of writing, I’d be remiss to not include a few lyrical snippets. Perhaps it’s my innate bias toward non-native speakers’ command of English showing through, but I was genuinely surprised at the emotional depth and clever composition of the lyrics. Take this line from “Envy” for example: “To overthrow his masters / Always the slave, by healthy envy was driven / But is my envy still healthy / When I wish not to inherit the castles they live in?.” The song itself deals with the idea of envy as a driving emotion, whether it becomes a source of motivation or cancerous hate. “Carpe Noctem” contains my favorite chorus on an album stuffed with memorable moments: “Throw your voice high into the air full of pride / Find your own road to glory / Use what powers life may give you / Never cease the fight / If you cannot win the day / Seize the night”. Inspirational? A clarion call to arms for loving oneself in the midst of a power metal song? What's going on here? Well-phrased and well-intentioned, Wuthering Heights hits it out of the proverbial park time and again.

If the length of this review is any indication, I love this record. From the virtuoso performances offered by the band to the single best vocal performance on a power metal album, The Shadow Cabinet has it all: thoughtful, incisive, beautiful, motivational, and just damn catchy. Anyone with an interest in music, much less metal should give this a listen. Wuthering Heights aren’t nearly as well-known as they should be considering the absurdly high quality of all five full-length albums, but it’s The Shadow Cabinet that moves them from great power metal to greatest power metal.

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One note timeless, came out of nowhere...