AMARANTHE are a Six-Piece Melodic Power Death Metal band from Gothenburg, Sweden. They are a difficult band to categorize, several people talk about Synth Pop Metal, Melodic Metal, Modern Metal, or even Dance Metal. They are fronted by the three-headed dragon that is Elize Ryd, Nils Molin, and Mikael Sehlin. All three vocalists have their different styles which adds a plethora of creative freedom. This is their seventh full-length album appropriately titled ‘’The Catalyst’’ and first since ‘’Manifest’’ back in 2020.

First of all, there are a lot of female-fronted metal bands out there, well…much more than in the late 90s with LACUNA COIL and THE GATHERING that were pioneers for women in metal. I guess it wasn’t easy to get ahead in the metal community but these girls pretty much burned down the hatches and gave Metal a shot in the arm pretty much. So we got a lot of female-fronted bands after that, a lot of them weren’t that great and were more or less a smoke show. A nice-looking girl who has an average voice, it was beauty before anything remotely intelligent or good.

But we got a lot of great stuff from EPICA, AFTER FOREVER, DELAIN, WITHIN TEMPTATION and then there is AMARANTHE. The Swedish metal band knocked my socks off back in October of 2015 when I did a review of ‘’Breaking Point’’, a collection of acoustic versions of songs and two B-Sides. I believe this was one of the very first reviews I ever did on the internet.

Let’s just say that Elize Ryd (other than being gorgeous!) has an amazing voice, it does remind me a lot of the female singers in all of Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s projects like STAR ONE, AYREON, STREAM OF PASSION, and so so forth. Her voice is one the most beautiful I ever heard in Metal. It’s full of passion, and power and she can sing her lungs out but she can tone it down like the acoustic parts on this album. But we hear the full power and range of her voice throughout this new album.

The addition of Nils Molin on the last few albums solidified an already cohesive unit and he adds to so much drive and passion. He has a better range of vocals than the departing Jake E. and has such a presence about him. You can tell that the famous confused Swedish cowboy (his given moniker by the band) is right at home with the band, well, AMARANTHE did relentlessly recruit him to be in the band, probably their best move up to date. This time GG6 has left the band to be replaced by relatively unknown screamer Mikael Sehlin, it affects the sound of the band and overall chemistry, and I will speak about it later on in this review of mine.

AMARANTHE is one of the most concise and precise bands out there. There is no band I can see or hear that is as effective in a span of a few minutes. Like their other albums, most of these songs are 3 to 4 minutes long and it gets straight to the heart of the matter. There is no wasted moment at all yet ‘’The Catalyst’’ suffers from a lack of proper solos. You already have three lead singers, not much is left for the rest and it hurts the overall quality of this album compared to their previous album ‘’Manifest’’.

Though they have upped their use of special effects and electronic elements compared to all their previous albums. You can see they are going into another direction for this album and want to broaden the horizons and get a much more mature sound yet, it will be frankly very difficult to duplicate in a live setting. I mean the basis of an album is to play the songs live yet there is an electronic effects overload which can get on the nerves of the listener. It will be hard to sing or play most of these songs on stage because the production elements are overflowing everywhere. Only a handful of songs are more in line with their previous work and can be played live but it’s something that left me more confused than anything.

AMARANTHE have an uncanny knack for producing incredibly catchy choruses and hooks. That’s their thing, the focal point of the band. It has the heavy side of Metal but you want to dance to those songs. The earworms are plenty yet this album only produces a few of these memorable songs. I have been listening to them since late 2015 and I can still remember some songs and hooks from their early days to the last album. Some songs have stayed with me all that time but this album only has a few songs I can consider bangers.

I can still hear in my head songs like ‘’Drop Dead Cynical’’ ‘’Digital World’’ or ‘’Helix’’ or actually most of the songs on ‘’Manifest’’ but even after 3 playthroughs, I can barely remember 2 or 3 songs at best. The other songs aren’t bad at all but they don’t stick like the others. I was expecting way more after 4 years of work and felt it lacked a bit of polish even though it’s a sensory overload, to say the least.

The best song off of ‘’The Catalyst’’ is ‘’Damnation Flame’’, such an incredible song, probably now in my top 5 in their career. It reminded me a whole lot of ‘’Candlelight Fantasia’’ by SYMPHONY X. This song is more of a neo-classical effort and it goes in a whole new direction compared to most of their previous material. This song is a showcase of the songwriting prowess of Olof Morck, the main man of the band. His guitar and keyboard work on this is incredible and he shows off his immense talent.

The other songs that are just awesome and get stuck in your head for hours at a time are ‘’Liberated’’ and ‘’Find Life’’. The other songs from ‘’The Catalyst’’ for me are interchangeable, neither great nor bad, just stuck in the middle.

I would have loved to get ‘’PVP’’ on this album, I know the song was written specifically for Sweden’s E-Sports World Championship Team but it’s so good and they play on this tour (the one with DRAGONFORCE all over North America and in Europe relatively soon). Maybe there is an intellectual property predicament right now for this song, I don’t know to be perfectly honest but this song is the last one with GG6 and it would have been a pretty cool sendoff for him.

Speaking of the growler of the group, we have to talk about Mikael Sehlin. I am discovering his work with this album like many of you out there. I know it was not a small task to replace the departing GG6, the larger-than-life singer left a huge space in the band. Mikael has a higher pitch to his growls and he tries way too hard to imitate GG6 and it does get on the nerves at times. He is trying to be someone he is not and the chemistry hasn’t settled in yet and I got to give it more time. He does some good work but I want him to be his own man, adding his personal touch to these songs. You have three singers, you have to find your vibe and stick to it. I can compare this situation to the addition of Marc Hudson as singer of DRAGONFORCE, boy oh boy, I was such a ZP Theart fanboy that it took me some time to get used to him. I thought he was uneasy and couldn’t find his stride in his first few albums with DRAGONFORCE but on the last album (and the album coming in March) he just delivers his style and doesn’t try to be someone he is not and I hope Mikael can find his way in this band and make his presence known.

The biggest surprise was the ROXETTE cover ‘’Fading Like a Flower’’. Well, I haven’t heard this song in 25 years! Like most of their covers, AMARANTHE does a great job of capturing the spirit of the original yet adding its unique flair. Like their covers of SABATON and POWERWOLF in the past, they change it up to mesh well with their style of music and accomplish a powerful yet elaborate cohesive delivery.

I think most of the 2023-2024 collaborations of Elize Ryd outside of AMARANTHE are much better than most of the material on ‘’The Catalyst’’, it’s much more catchy and it feels more organic. She collaborated with DRAGONFORCE on an alternate version of ‘’Doomsday Party’’ which she seems to have so much fun doing and the video is hilarious. She also did some guest vocals on APOCALYPTICA’s ‘’What We’re Up Against’’ and added another notch to her belt with those legends. Her outside work is outshining her work in her main band.

She still belts out her wonderful voice and shows her immense talent, yet the songwriting seems to be in dire need of direction. Each of their albums had a concept idea, a driving force that was a common thread for their songs. ‘’Manifest’’ was based on positivity and empowerment and being a better person in the face of the trials and tribulations of life itself. ‘’The Catalyst’’ has its moments but it doesn’t share the same focal elements as the previous albums and it feels all over the place. It lacks a bit of cohesion and homogeneity but overall it’s still a good album but not as memorable as others in their catalog.

Amaranthe is a band on the brink of worldwide success, they continue with their unique style and make it count when needed. “The Catalyst” is a step backward for me but this album may reach broader audiences and horizons with their sound. It’s still a solid effort from the Three Headed Dragon but I feel like something is deeply missing and as a longstanding fan, I was disappointed, to say the least, but you still have some bangers for years to come.