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Hard to believe this is the 7th album for Delain. I remember when their debut made an impression on me, and then they kept putting out good albums. But the past decade has been rough, with a declining quality of work, and more and more alt rock/pop melodies taking over, especially in the vocal lines. The band was polished and tight, and Charlotte Wessels was always a great singer, but the band just wasn't making music I liked. One listen to Apocalypse & Chill in 2020 was enough to tell me I didn't need to pay attention to this band anymore.

But this is almost a whole new band. With all the members except main songwriter/key player Martijn Westerholt leaving in 2021, he had to recruit some old members to fill out the lineup, and then had the daunting task of finding a singer to replace Wessels. I didn't even pay attention to this when it was released, and now I am sorry I skipped it, as this is the sound of Delain back on track. The excessive pop melodies have been ditched, and the alt-rock sensibilities seem to have followed Wessels to her solo project, so this sounds more like April Rain or We Are The Others—like the last decade of substandard albums never happened.

A big plus is new singer Diana Leah, who sounds remarkably like Wessels, yet brings a degree of effortless technicality that is legitimately impressive—she does everything Wessels did, and does it easily, and then she does more. She has the same winsome nasality, and even if she doesn't have the same warmth, her belt is much more powerful, and she seems to have a wider range. I was skeptical of the band's ability to replace what they lost, but overall I think Leah is a more versatile singer who makes the band even stronger than before.

The running time is not nearly as wearying as it looks like, as the standard digital edition includes all-instrumental versions of the entire album, no doubt reflecting that the whole thing was written (and maybe recorded) before they had a singer. The album is really just 11 tracks if you include the piano version of "The Quest and the Curse" added as a bonus cut.

All this is to say that this is the best Delain album in over a decade, and if you miss the days of their early trio of works, then this is a sure bet, as you could say this was the follow-up to We Are The Others and you would easily believe it. Westerholt responded to adversity with the strongest fistful of material he has written in ten or twelve years. There are standout cuts like "Beneath", "Mirror of Night," and "Queen of Shadow", but there are no real weak songs on here. I do wish they had backed off on the harsh vocals, even though those only pop up here and there. Overall this is a first-rate album by a band I had written off.