Temperance - The Earth Embraces Us All

original review on https://www.wingsofdeath.net/Temperance-The-Earth-Embraces-Us-All

For over two years, Temperance has brightened up my playlist with their fantastic electro-metal sound. Their self- titled debut as well as their second album Limitless keeps on entertaining me. Now the time has come for their third album, and so it appears that Temperance releases a new album every year. This, however, doesn’t affect the quality, as their latest studio wonder The Earth Embraces Us All shows. An album that really fits the description ‘third time’s the charm’, because now Temperance really shows what they are made of, and they shake off the newbie image for good with an album that is filled with fantastical composing, challenging quirks and wonderful melodies.

We open with A Thousand Places, and it lets us know from the off that this album is taking a more serious approach than the previous ones. Where both albums started quite happy-joy-joy-ish, this song has a tense feeling, but despite this change, the atmosphere as a whole stays delightfully recognizable. Up till the last part of the song at least, where the glorious pounding makes way for a jazzy ending. With that added saxophone it almost feels like a sitcom intro. Talking about contrast! One thing is for sure: Temperance’s got balls!

The intro of The Edge of Space is almost exactly the same to Nightwish’ Ghost Love Score choir, but now as an inimitable Temperance version.  Thankfully they do put their own stamp on the rest of the song. An outstanding sing-a-long chorus and lightning speed drums drive this one. Unspoken Words has a folky twist to it, and is the kind of earworm that Temperance is known for. Empty Lines brings out the disco elements and reminds the listener that Temperance has ingenious ways of combining metal and electro.

Maschere is Temperance’s first song sung in Italian, and it’s good that it is, because if the language didn’t change this song would have become more of a standard ‘filler’’. Still, Chiara sounds as lovely as always when singing in her mother tongue, and Maschere becomes a nice, not too shabby song after all.

Haze comes to blow my face off with a sort of trance-core intro, after which the song keeps pounding on with a chorus that is stripped of all excessive elements, but that makes a nice contrast as well. Fragments of Life is a delightful waltzy powerballad, but then again maybe to full of sounds to call it a real ballad. Still, one of the more relaxed songs on the album. It makes me long for a beautiful, small and humble ballad, which Temperance still fails to deliver up till now. Come on guys, you’re Italians, give me some romance!   

Revolution comes with a lyric video, and also invites to sing along loudly. Chiara’s high and full opera vocals are back, and that’s a perk she may use more often, if I had any say in it. An Arabic twist gives the song a boost halfway, and saves it from the ‘standard single material’ judgment.

The first epic on this album is Advice from a Caterpillar (Alice in Wonderland reference?) and sounds delightfully fairytale-like at some points. A violin is put in here and there to give it something extra, and when it comes to atmosphere it kinda goes all over the place.  After a sweet vocalizing part, we are suddenly treated with another smooth-jazz bit – talking about random – but that also flows back in a grandiose manner to good old pounding.

Change the Rhyme is a bittersweet intermezzo ‘reflection of life’ semi-ballad before we really turn our focus to the last epic, The Restless Ride. Well, it sure makes me restless, as it seems to be a collection of smaller songs that has been stuck together.  But it is the parts in between that make this song worthy of the title; fucking epic! Chiara and Marco each take their turn in the vocal department, and we’re sometimes treated with multivocal goodness (always a great thing!), sweet, slower moments with a piano as protagonist and a heavenly piece of choir that makes every hair on my body stand upright. Aside from that piece of musical heaven, it kinda stays a ragtag bunch of elements. This makes the song quite phenomenal, but the big picture is not quite clear because of it. De speed and melody go all over the place, but manage to find their place quite nicely at the end that still gives the song a satisfactory ending.

It may be ‘only’ their third album, but one that forms a milestone for Temperance. It’s a huge leap in the right direction in comparison to the last two, that were already magnificent in their own ways, and The Earth Embraces Us All does provide a really high standard for whatever this band is up to in the future. This is really their best record so far, but there is still space to exceed it, though they will have to give it a whole lot to achieve that.

Temperence, I congratulate you, The Earth Embraces Us All, is for now, an astounding record!