You get the feeling that despite being the formidable- lunged voice of Finnish symphonic metal titans Nightwish, Dutch belter Floor Jansen has eyes on a move away from their more cultish audience to more mainstream acclaim.
On the first album under her own name the same strengths that stand out with her alma mater prove her trump cards again. Invincible and Come Full Circle veer too close to 80s-style AOR blandness.
But far more striking are the numbers when Jansen allows herself the freedom to let rip from a theoretical mountaintop, with some vague sense of a natural disaster unfolding around her, as on the sweeping melodrama of Storm or the thunderous chamber rock of the final track and recent single Fire.
Likewise, third single Me Without You works when she really reaches for the high notes as if reaching out for something she's just lost as it shrinks over the horizon.
