Band:	Sirenia
Album:	Perils Of The Deep Blue
Style:	Symphonic gothic metal
Release date:	June 2013

01. Ducere Me In Lucem
02. Seven Widows Weep
03. My Destiny Coming To Pass
04. Ditt Endelikt
05. Cold Caress
06. Darkling
07. Decadence
08. Stille Kom Døden
09. The Funeral March
10. Profound Scars
11. A Blizzard Is Storming
12. Chains [bonus]
13. Blue Colleen [bonus]

Sirenia has for a long time been a band that, release after release, managed to divide their fan-base into those that appreciate their releases with all its flaws, and those that mourn the long gone days of Veland's creation in Tristania and early Sirenia. The Enigma Of Life further escalated the gap between the two sides and it seemed like Sirenia had lost all of its creativity in the process. Gone were the classical days when the orchestral arrangements were not used as a gothic gimmick, gone also were the days when Morten Veland was still somehow involved in the more extreme direction of metal.

When Sirenia started to fit in the expression "beating a dead horse," Perils Of The Deep Blue came into the equation. Call me an optimist, but I do believe that the many inconveniences that incited the fan-base were finally heard by Veland and the crew and they decided they should turn back some pages and go back a little bit to the roots to be more explicit. While this new opus is not a complete come back, it does have some hints. Veland started to rework his insight in terms of the usage of orchestration, finally deciding that a more classical perspective should be implemented on this record.

This decision triggered another change which revolved around the main singer. Ailyn has been thoroughly dismissed because of her way too smooth vocal delivery, being seen as not really 'metal' by several purists. Aside from the pointless talks about what is 'metal' and what isn't, this time Ailyn seems like she took some vocal lessons and shaped her voice in such a manner that it fits a more classical direction. You can feel this precisely from the very intro of the album, "Ducere Me In Lucem", a melancholic funeral ode with a classical vibe which features lyrics written in Latin. By no means is Ailyn a bad singer. She is just an untrained one, a rough diamond more precisely and I am sure that we will see more improvements in the future.

These changes are welcomed, but the real ones and the primordial ones are in the compositional structure of the songs which are more consistent compared to the ones present on the previous three outputs. "Seven Widows Weep" is a classically oriented song; fast-paced and abrupt which descends into a dark atmosphere. "Darklight" combines elements of doom metal with an infusion of gothic tinged death metal which confirms Veland's predilection towards extreme metal on this record.

Another welcome surprise is the usage of Norwegian language in several songs, one of them being performed by a guest musician, "Ditt Endelikt" and "Stille Kom Døden" both of them being highlights on this record, the last one lasting no less than 12 minutes! "Decadence" features an infusion of industrial elements while "The Funeral March", on top of Ailyn's best vocal delivery, proves that the band left behind those clichéd gothic tinged song structures that annoyed so many people in the past.

With all these improvements, the band forgot that composition is just one side of a proper output. Unfortunately the mixing and mastering were done in a rather poor way, especially the mixing. It seems way too loud from the beginning until the end, but this is a feature that was used on previous outputs as well. The album also suffers from being a bit too long, and the quality starts to dwindle as you approach the end. The band could not manage to keep the quality from start to finish which proves that they still have much to reflect upon.

All in all, this album shows Sirenia attempting to reach the right path once again and avoid silly gimmicks that made them look like a joke in the past. While there is still room for improvement, the aspects discussed here reveal a promising feature for the band and maybe, just maybe, the next album might correct the vulnerabilities this one featured.