Metal Underground.com

A late 2014 release, Voices Of Destiny capped the year with a third full-length album featuring a new vocalist for an epic, soaring sound that combines female-fronted Gothic metal with more extreme styles. Fans of outfits like Sirenia or Revamp will be right at home here with this varied release that offers both soothing symphonics and shredding metal in alternating doses.

A “beauty and the beast” band, there's both operatic clean singing on the female side and harsh growls on the male side, but the vocals actually have more variety than just an either/or scenario. Different styles come up across the disc, including some voice-over work to push the album's story, and new front-woman Ada Flechtner has great range within her overall sound. Moving past the vocals into the instrumentation, “Crisis Cult” is an album that's consistently energetic and has a good balance between symphonic/melodic aspects and the harsher metal elements.

A few songs do shift more towards the softer side, like the all piano and vocal ending track “Your Creation” or the less-heavy offering “Under Control,” but these are counterbalanced by tracks like the frantic and heavy “Stormcrow.” Every track showcases a subtle but distinct shift in tone as well, so there's very little bleed through across the album. The aforementioned “Stormcrow” for instance utilizes sci-fi keyboards, while “The Great Hunt” is filled with movie score style string instruments and “To The Slaughter” includes some stuttering industrial/electronic effects.

Anyone who digs symphonic bands that switch between harsh and smooth will almost certainly love “Crisis Cult,” and it's definitely an album to check out if you dig anything from Mayan to Xandria. The only real complaint to be found is that it's not a particularly unique sound and doesn't significantly change the genre formula, but the quality is so high and the songs memorable enough that the album shines anyway.