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American born and since a year fellow-country woman (she lives in the Netherlands); Amanda Somerville is the initiator of Trillium. A lot of metal heads know her for the work with Kamelot, Avantasia and Aina. Her solo albums are full of nice pop/rock songs, and a lot of our readers will not have these albums on the shelves. With Trillium however, Amanda has decided to make an album with more metal songs. Most of the songs have been written by Amanda helped out by guitarist Sander Gommans (HDK, ex-After Forever) and Sascha Paeth.

Don't expect ultra heavy tracks, but music that includes elements of Nightwish, Within Temptation, Epica and Avantasia. With Amanda on vocals there are off course lots of serene singing parts, but in the heavy pieces the guitars take the lead. An album produced by Sascha can't do without good arranged keyboard - and orchestral parts. A few tracks sound rather bombastic and it sometimes reminds of Epica, especially with her vocals on top. The most impressive and interesting track is "Scream It". In that song Amanda sings a duet with Jorn Lande. Their voices form an excellent couple that brings a kind of tension to the song. Personally I find the songs "Purge" and "Into the Dissonance" a little too modern with electronic kind of beats in it. In a lot of tracks I can hear that Amanda has been listening to and working with metal bands and projects a lot lately. She knows how to write good arranged melodic orchestral metal songs with enough variety.

This Amanda project doesn't bring new elements in the gothic metal genre, but the quality of the songs and Amanda's vocals make this an album that will be loved by fans of the bands I mentioned above. Although I have to say that the music is a lot softer than Epica and without the grunts. Describe it as mix of Avantasia, Within Temptation and Nightwish.

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