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Third album from Delain, who on the one hand have come to exemplify everything trendy about ‘Gothic Metal" and on the other hand escape dismissal by being a really good band. Within Temptation have become far too slick and commercial, while Autumn are turning into Pink Floyd, leaving Delain as the clear leader here.

April Rain was a lot of things the debut was not: big, glossy, and full of pop-styled hooks, despite that it was the heavier of the two records. We Are The Others is unsurprisingly a mix of the two approaches - it is also slick and glossily produced, as well as filled with sweeping, hooky choruses, but here the melodies are more involved, recalling less the bombastic heaviness of April Rain, and more the incisive, personal feeling of Lucidity.

No guest vocals from Marco Hietala this time, but I don’t care so much, since vocalist Charlotte Wessels continues to improve, winding her expressive, sexy voice around some delicious melodies. Pretty much every song features indelible hooks that will stick with you the first time out (with the exception of the awful "Where is the Blood", which features the yapping of Fear Factory hack Burton Bell, and about which less said the better). The infectious title song, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" and the compulsively hooky "Generation Me". . . there are lines here that will never come out of your head.

You could argue that this is essentially pop music for metalheads, and if you don’t like Gothic Metal already, then you won’t like this either. But for all their accessibility and appeal, Delain only occasionally make the mistake of underestimating their audience, and except on that one song, you never feel like they are just crapping out a something they don’t mean.