Tarja – What Lies Beneath Review

by Michael Melchor on 08.31.2010

A voice this dynamic almost needs no accompaniment, but some stronger foundation would help.

Tarja (Turunen) is back, and about 95% of the female singers on the planet should be put on notice as a result.

Once the voice of Nightwish, Tarja was released from the band almost five years ago. Since then, she has carved out her own niche on her own using her authoritative singing talents. After a Finnish Christmas album (for her native nation) and 2007’s My Winter Storm, Tarja’s What Lies Beneath is the latest to display her abilities.

The problem with Tarja’s voice is that it’s so forceful, it’s rather difficult to find the right music to support it without being drowned out or made to sound generic against such a force. What Lies Beneath succeeds in this more often than not, but that issue is still problematic to Tarja making a classic (as opposed to classical) record.

“Anteroom Of Death” stands as arguably the most daring opening track of the year. No, you don’t understand. The song actually dares you to continue through the rest of the album. Not because it’s a horrible song at all, but more because Tarja’s classical leanings are thrown directly in your face via a myriad of tempo changes, a harpsichord (?!), sections of both chamber music and flat-out metal, and choir vocals (courtesy of German cappella/metal band van Canto), among many other turns. It’s what might be expected of a symphonic metal album turned up to about 15 and a fascinating song that can easily have the proverbial layers peeled away with each listen. “Anteroom Of Death” simply has so much going on - all, somehow, seamlessly put together. It could be declared , at best, symphonic metal’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and, at worst, a feat in and of itself to make it to track 2.

Once that’s accomplished, however, the rest settles back in to much less mind-bending territory. Tarja’s vocals are designed to shine over hard-driving music, but it’s the music sometimes that becomes that becomes an issue. “Until My Last Breath” features great work by her, but the backing is almost pedestrian in comparison. Tarja’s voice is so powerful that it tends to outshine the music she’s singing over. With Nightwish, she never had this issue; Tuomas Holopainen wrote the music specifically for her, and the compliment ranged from thrilling to outright staggering.

Here, having just the right music and arrangements behind her sometimes hampers What Lies Beneath as a whole. The arrival of guest stars, such as All That Remains’s Phil Labonte on “Dark Star” and Joe Satriani on “Falling Awake”, sometimes helps the issue. Vocally, the exchange between Tarja and Labonte on “Dark Star” is about as close to old-school Nightwish as it gets. Satriani, meanwhile, provides about the only guitar solo on the album that matches Tarja’s power. Living Colour’s Will Calhoun sounds great on the closer “Crimson Deep”, but it’s almost a moot point as the song is already a 7:36 epic that was written to stand out, anyway.

What Lies Beneath isn’t a one-trick pony, however. After “Anteroom Of Death”, there are certainly other reasons to stick around other than guest stars. “Little Lies” has a great driving rhythm and an infectious chorus - the kind of things that are taken to higher levels by a dominant soprano. “Underneath” is a soaring piano ballad; yes, they still exist, they just don’t happen but once in a blue moon. If that’s not unbelievable enough, it happens twice on the same record (at least on the US version), as "Montanas de Silencio" takes a minute to build, but the effect is enough to savor when Tarja delivers vocal poetry that I’m pretty convinced very few other singers (and certainly none in popular music) could muster.

What Lies Beneath is an enjoyable album if you can lean more towards classical (opera) vocal stylings for a bit. However, it’s also inconsistent; the music could certainly serve her better in many songs. With the right band (which won’t be her old one, much as we could dream), Tarja could flatten any arena on this planet with a voice superior to countless others - and, with more effort in to songwriting and musicianship, could render a record an instant classic. This would have been it if the music could support the weight and strength of her voice.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]