Review: Exit Eden – Femmes Fatales

Napalm Records (January 12^th, 2024)

Reviewer: Jason Hopper

After a seven-year gap, Exit Eden return with their second album Femmes Fatales. This supergroup of sorts features some incredibly talented female singers of the Euro-metal scene.  Their debut album, consisting of symphonic metal orchestrations of cover songs, featured four top female singers in the symphonic metal world: Clémentine Delauney, Anna Brunner, Marina La Torraca, and Amanda Somerville. Ms. Somerville chose to excuse herself from the band this go around, with the remaining three ladies choosing to continue and not replace her.

While this album once again features cover songs, the band decided to add six originals by Anna Brunner and her writing partner Hannes Braun. This is the same team that brought us the recent ‘Kissin’ Dynamite’ and ‘League of Distortion’ albums and ultimately the reason I wanted to check out this album as I highly rated their previous efforts.

To begin, I believe a good approach will be to compare some of the covers on this album to other covers made by bands that preceded Exit Eden’s effort, at least the ones that I am familiar with. ‘It’s a Sin’ is a great song to cover and their combination in tackling the chorus is beautifully powerful. With that said, I am aware of a similar cover from Gamma Ray dating back to 1999.  While Exit Eden do an excellent job, Gamma Ray’s version is simply divine and remains untouchable.

The band takes on what I would consider to be an unconventional track with Alice Cooper’s ‘Poison’. The band manages to take an overplayed song and infuse it with orchestral overtones to make it sound fresh.  It is certainly not a carbon copy and I can always appreciate a cover that has a vastly different approach in its execution. A song I had long since grown sick of was once again enjoyable. Powerwolf released a version of this song nearly a year ago, but the Exit Eden cover is far superior.

Speaking of overplayed, we now move on to the band’s cover of Journey’s ‘Separate Ways’.  Yes, it is a well-done cover, but the issue I have with it is it stands in the shadow of two very recent and quite stellar versions performed by Eva Under Fire in 2022 and Daughtry/Lzzy Hale in 2023. The ladies should have selected another Journey track, preferably more of a deep cut.

I feel the exact same way with their cover of Heart’s ‘Alone’. It’s well done and sounds suitably epic, but I would have preferred something less known. There are no surprises here. How you think it would sound is exactly how is does. Their other two covers, a French song entitled ‘Desanchantée’ and Marillion’s ‘Kayleigh’ admittedly sound like original tracks as I’m not familiar with them. Both are enjoyable and the album could have benefitted by tackling more obscure numbers.

Now we get to the reason I wanted to review the album in the first place, the original material.  I heard ‘Run!’ when it was released last October and I was pleasantly surprised that the band was releasing new material, as I imagined their debut to be a one-off.  The inclusion of former Nightwish bassist/singer Marko Hietala was practically a no-brainer as he fits this material perfectly, with the song reminding me of recent Nightwish tracks that followed the Tarja-era.

The standout amongst the new tracks is ‘Buried in the Past’, a song I can easily have seen making it onto a Kissin’ Dynamite album due to lead singer Hannes Braun’s involvement in the construction of this album.  The keyboard melody throughout creates a sense of triumph and strength to match the lyrics of overcoming one’s past to move on to greener pastures.  Inspirational in all the right ways.

Second favorite for me is opener ‘Femme Fatale’.  It’s one of those tracks that starts out thunderous before going quiet in the first verse and building throughout into the bridge and bursting forth in the chorus.  I love when dynamics like this are utilized in symphonic metal.  If I was unaware of this song and I came across it randomly, I would have sworn it was the newest Nightwish song featuring current singer Floor Jansen.

While all the originals adds something that makes this album flourish, I will mention one more track. ‘Dying in My Dreams’ is a mid-tempo rocker with the type of guitar lead that relies on power chords being strummed and allowed to breathe as the notes wash over the underlying keys holding the melody line.  Nothing fancy, just atmospheric and a perfect counterpart to lyrics that convey desperation.

Outside of the inclusion of original tracks, one noticeable difference between this new album and their debut is how much they toned down their operatic approach.  I am not sure if this due to the absence of Amanda Somerville or if they decided to try a more straight forward rock vocal, but I prefer the way these new songs are constructed in comparison to their previous effort.

In the middle of writing this review, I took a break and headed over to an online CD distributor and pre-ordered this album, because music of this quality needs to be supported. I would suggest that if you like any of the bands mentioned in this review that you do the same. This album is a notch up for me in comparison to their debut and hope to hear more from these ladies, hopefully in less than seven years’ time.

Tracklist:

1. Femme Fatale
2. It’s A Sin
3. Run!
4. Separate Ways
5. Buried in the Past
6. Desanchantée
7. Dying in My Dreams
8. Poison
9. Alone
10. Hold Back Your Fear
11. Kayleigh
12. Elysium