DELAIN

There was a lot riding on DELAIN's 2023 album, "Dark Waters". It was the Dutch icons' first album with a new singer, Diana Leah, and a refreshed lineup, featuring returning members Sander Zoer (drums) and Ronald Landa (guitar) and new bassist Ludovico Cioffi, alongside founder and composer Martijn Westerholt. Only two years on from the unexpected departure of Charlotte Wessels, DELAIN needed to deliver something strong and reassuring for their not inconsiderable fan base, and "Dark Waters" proudly lived up to expectations. Leah's voice was a neat fit, Westerholt's songwriting was marching forward with enthusiasm, and despite largely sticking to the symphonic metal script, there were occasional glimmers of progress. A new era had begun.

One year later, DELAIN are back with "Dance With The Devil": a three-track EP that also happens to include a sizeable helping of fresh live material. As a showcase for Leah's talents, the live tracks are hard to fault. Filling her predecessor's shoes was always going to be a daunting proposition, but here she glides majestically through a host of some of DELAIN's best loved songs, including certified classics "April Rain" and "We Are The Others", gracefully declaring ownership over the whole lot. Meanwhile, material from "Dark Waters" is grittier than in its studio incarnation: Leah really sinks her teeth into the swooping highs and sonorous lows of pomp-metal kick-off "The Cold"; "Queen of Shadow" is a wonderfully overblown, symphonic metal upgrade; and "A Moth To A Flame" brings state-of-the-art modern metal and radio-melting AOR together, already sounding like a DELAIN classic.

The real reasons for being here are the three new studio cuts. Westerholt's recent predilection for more retro-futuristic textures and tones has been pushed even further on the title track, which is also one of the most direct, pop-metal anthems to emerge from his pen in recent memory. Synthesizers play a huge part and briefly threaten to swamp the guitars, but this is a subtle tweak to the DELAIN formula, and one that suits the new lineup perfectly well. Harder and darker, "The Reaping" weaves cinematic lushness into taut and rugged metal structures, with a colossal, bright-eyed melody skidding across the uneven topography. It is the finest song Westerholt has written since the upheaval and comes close to long-established greatness of "Sleepwalkers Dream" (originally from 2006 debut "Lucidity"),which re-appears here in re-recorded form, sounding like a million Euros. Again, Diana Leah has no trouble imposing her own personality on a cherished classic.

A generous stopgap with some excellent new songs and numerous old songs reborn, "Dance With The Devil" is additional, welcome confirmation that DELAIN are doing absolutely fine, thank you very much.