Shine

First and foremost: Shine is not a metal album. It doesn't even vaguely try to be a metal album. It's a lot of simple melodies that exist only to serve as background music. In other words, it's a pop album - 100%.

Anette Olzon, as many of you probably know, is the ex-singer of Nightwish. With Nightwish, she was lead vocals for two albums - both of which were quite good and really showcased her vocal talent. She gained a lot of fans and, as a result, was able to put together this solo record.

So I'm not going to review this as a metal album. I'm actually a fan of female singers of all flavors (and I'm really not a metal fan in general, to be honest), so I do have some degree of credibility with which to base my opinion. What makes a pop album good? Excellent vocal talents and interesting songs. I'm not going to give an album 3, 4 or 5 stars simply because it contains a single top 40 single among the twisted debris of failed songwriting.

Does Anette showcase excellent vocals here? Yes. I do have an issue with the mix. In the vast majority of the songs her voice is pushed almost into the background. It's the star of the show in these songs, but just barely. Nightwish had quite a few songs that really put her in the spotlight and I don't feel like she has many of these moments in her own album. It's not that she can't do it, or even that these songs couldn't allow it, they just weren't mixed that way. It makes what could have been amazing singing into simply good singing. "Watching Me From Afar" is an example of what this album SHOULD have been. It's beautiful.

Does Shine have interesting songs? Yes. The songwriting on this album is well above average for pop. There's different instruments with different sounds. This isn't a festival of synthetics like typical pop albums are. The instruments are fun to listen to. Make no mistake, they're really never in the limelight (except maybe in "Moving Away", which is one of the highlights of the album). That's for Anette, always, as it should be in these albums. Each song sounds fairly unique, however. That's what you want.

What about catchy singles? Not really. That's not really a knock against the album in any way. None of the songs stand out as simply amazing. If you wanted to show your friends a song, I'd say it should be "Hear Me" or her first single for the album, "Lies". Those two songs stand out among the rest, but not by much. That's simply because the songs are, overall, quite good and catchy. There are no duds in this box of firecrackers. They just don't make as loud of a bang.

Overall, I really like this album. Fans of Anette will be very pleased if they want an album that really showcases her. What fans won't get is Anette's Nightwish remade. You'll probably have Dark Passion Play as the highlight of that sound in history. The real crime of this album is the mix which washes out her beautiful vocals. The effect is that all the sections that should have been full of power simply do not. It's really too bad. There's so much promise here. Still, 4 solid stars.