?Classics? of power metal #10: WUTHERING HEIGHTS - The Shadow Cabinet (2006), upon further review

As complex and unusual as the music gets, I always come back to the vocals.  Here, I mean (although also in general).  Vocals are what make The Shadow Cabinet truly unique.  (I assume Erik Ravn is the main vocal force here, my apologies if I misidentify someone else's goofy voice as his.)  

[EDIT:  This what happens when a newb tries to listen to something about which little info is at arms' length.  An earlier version of this post just went on like that, crediting Erik for most of the vocals.  Apparently the main man on the vox is actually Nils Patrik Johansson, who joined WH in 2003, also known to people who are not me for his work in the bands Astral Doors, Lion's Share, and, later, Civil War.]

You hear musical theater performances from non-metal people - stage actors, but rockers like Meat Loaf too - elsewhere, and you hear metal guys strain their voices trying to hit notes outside of there range elsewhere.  What you don't get elsewhere is someone with a gritty rock-friendly voice who can clearly sing just go completely nuts, giving his full-throated all into every word like Nils does.  So stagey.  So self-consciously dramatic.  So... unlike what you expect from a metal record. 

The unorthodox singing is both Cabinet's most defining feature and the reason that I don't think I'll ever unabashedly love it.  In my post about Falconer I marveled at how that's a piece of music that works no matter what mood I'm in.  The Shadow Cabinet is definitely not that.  As above, I do think Nils is a good singer, and the lack of polish I'll take as part of the charm of the total gusto with which he throws himself into the singing... some of the time.  But... does he have to sing everything like that? I have to be in a very particular mood to vibe with Nils's performance.  It really is a lot.  So even when I'm feeling the music, moments like the intro of "Sleep" I can't do.  The part of "Beautifool" with the faux-crying backing vocals I can't do.  I mean, this is silly shit.  I don't like musical theater much* because it pushes the limits of my tolerance for the melodramatic; I push up against some of those same walls when I'm listening to Cabinet.  

That unfortunately pretty much prevents me from engaging much with the lyrics.  I often - quite often, let me emphasize that - find myself thinking "ooh, this bit is neat."  One think I don't find is being moved.  I'm way too distracted by how the dude is singing to pay much attention to what words he's singing.  For what it's worth, the lyrics veer for me between interesting poetry and fourteen year old's poetry.  To be clear, that's usually good enough for metal - a fourteen year old's poem about existential dread or angst is often a step above an eleven year old's poem about fighting a dragon, after all.***

Take away the vox and Cabinet is still an interesting record.  One of the better written songs lyrically with the most restrained vocal melody**** happens to be my favorite by a wide margin on a musical level - "Faith - Apathy Divine Part I."  That one does a lot of things well, but being a simple listener, my favorite thing may be the use of the intro and outro.  Opening with its main riff as a straight up folk tune before handing it to the guitars isn't unique or anything - I mean, Running Wild, a band that developed a life-threatening allergy to innovation sometime around 1986, have done it*****, so you know that that device in and of itself doesn't make a song prog.  What I like about that device for a Wuthering Heights song is the way it orients the listener to know exactly which tune to follow through the song, as they then go on to playfully toss it between the instruments and (sort of) the verse melody.  You have a folky tune played in a metal style paired with a wordy pure power-metal chorus, and that's a song structure I can easily understand.  Then you can throw in as much syncopation and rhythm changes and multiple middle sections as you want - you know, the proggier stuff that'll reward deeper study - and the song still feels tight and coherent.  One of those rare eight-minute tunes that does not feel its length.

Other tracks have the whole "folky tune played as metal" thing going too, as I talked about at great length in my first post about Cabinet.  But Wuthering Heights so often are either doing songs without any folk elements that I can recognize, or are doing that but are also running off on some musical rambling.  Lots of songs are built around lively jig-like tunes ("Snow" and "I Shall Not Yield" being the most obvious examples) or just big hooky choruses ("The Raven") that I wish they'd sit on and milk a little more.  This is more a personal-taste complaint than a criticism of the music per se.  I do want to acknowledge the clear skill that went into both the songwriting and the performances here.  It's just closer to Rhapsody than to Angra in how committed the band is to sticking with a musical idea, and I personally enjoy the latter band's approach better, at least from what I've heard.*******

            

So, I think that's where I am with The Shadow Cabinet.  Quite enjoyed the experience of discovering it, yet can never for a second seem to shake the feeling that it's more an exhausting effort than something that I'm going to be bumping in the whip (especially because my car doesn't have a CD player.  More on that below).  It's all cool, though.  Even if it's not quite for me, this band deserves a lot of credit for a pretty cool record that puts a spin on metal not quite like anything I've ever heard before.

Other thoughts

- "Demon Desire" leans so heavily into the keys, both as orchestral-style power chords and as big arpeggioes that sound like an actual piano.  That gives the music enough of another dimension that fits well with its stagy-ness that I'm kinda surprised that other than maybe "Snow," the rest of the record doesn't utilize that more prominently.

- Also kinda surprised they don't have more parts like the chorus of "Sleep" with the double-tracked vocals.

- Okay, I do want to acknowledge an elephant in the room here.  Beyond the music being high-effort, getting the music is high effort.  Wuthering Heights as a project seems to be on a probably permanent hiatus.  As best as I can tell, Erik is basically personally running the "band" as a merch store at this point.  One would think some low key promotion that makes their music available would be the key to their legacy as a weird '00s act that walked its own path, a little treat for novelty seekers to still be discovering in another twenty years.  Yet whether due to Erik's own peccadilloes or something involving a record label or other rights holder, as best as I can tell there is literally no way to listen to Cabinet legally without physical media.  Streaming services don't carry it.  Streaming-based radio services can't play it.  You can't buy a digital download.  Pretending for a second that everyone's going to follow the law, are potential new fans supposed to spend $25 or whatever the exchange rate on one record, sight unheard, based on word of mouth, and then try to find a specific time to listen to it?  I get that music was once that way, but this is the mid-twenty-first century.  Most music listeners need their music to be portable.  No shade on the audiophiles who swear by vinyl in a dark room, but I also will contemptuously dismiss any suggestion that someone who mostly listens to music while walking or whatever isn't a "real" music nerd.  That's just the age.  My point is that there are at least a few people out there who really should hear Cabinet - whose tastes would be a perfect match for it - who never will.  And the majority of those who do hear Cabinet will do so through means that do not compensate those who worked to create it, either financially or through the type of stats that bolster reputation.  A legacy withers and dies without new fans.  The absolute priority for those who own an inactive artist should be preserving a means to get some new fans.  It's a shame.

Favorite track:  "Faith - Apathy Divine Part I"

Runner up:  "Snow - Apathy Divine Part II"

Least favorite track (non-interlude):  "Beautifool"

Rating:  3.5/5 

Things I learned about power metal

- There is a cutoff for how much progginess I like in my power metal, and Angra's Temple Of Shadows is basically my limit.

- There is an exact sweet spot for how theatrical and dramatic I like my power metal vocals, and it's basically Mathias Blad's performance on Falconer's self-titled record. 

- I'm a huge sucker for the popular trick of starting a song by presenting the main riff in an altered way - slower, acoustic, on different instruments, etc.

- And not a new fact, but reinforced here: there's more than one way to folk-metal.

Will I come back to Wuthering Heights?

Probably not.  I think one record's worth is the right amount of Wuthering Heights for me.

Next:  Well, next in the planned sequence is Ancient Bards' The Alliance Of The Kings.  I am considering first doing an unplanned additional entry from the '00s, though.  I still have to actually sit down, listen, and decide if I have enough to say about it.  Hint: It's another entry from an artist that I've already covered on this here blog.  

So, initial thoughts on one record or another, whenever I get around to it!

*Except for CATS**, which I really like for some inexplicable reason.  I never claimed my tastes, or anyone's, are coherent.

**The stage show; definitely not the 2019 film  

***And yes, since I picked on it last time, I was indeed relieved to realize that "Demon Desire" is not, in fact, about a literal sex demon.

****Even if the main melody is basically the same one as "A Quest For The Crown" from the Falconer record

*****Most effectively in Blazon Stone outtake "Billy The Kid."******

*******Not to be confused with "The Ballad Of William Kidd."  Different Kid(d).

********I do think that the songs on The Shadow Cabinet are tighter compositions than are the songs on Symphony Of Enchanted Lands, for the most part.