I have been listening to the new Delain album on and off for a few weeks now.

I really liked the single “Your Body is a Battleground” when I first heard it before buying the whole album. It’s a nice symphonic metal track with interesting orchestral bombast to reinforce its darkly epic theme about corporations having a sinister financial interest regarding what chemicals you pump into your body.

But I was disappointed, when first listening to the entire album, that none of the other tracks were really grabbing me more than that lead-off single track. The other tracks just seemed to be the standard Delain thing with nothing out of the ordinary. They all blended into one another with a sameness. Nothing really stood out.

But then suddenly lightning struck, and twice: my attention was arrested by two tracks that have since become, after repeated listens, my absolute favorites on the album: “Army of Dolls” and “Don’t Let Go.” These are both very cool, super interesting songs that mix dance floor beats and synthesizers together with metal guitar riffs!

This is an exhilarating new direction for Delain… and I must say that I really love it.

Both tracks have a unique flavor to them. They are creative and unusual and so much fun to listen to.

Now, I’m not a dance or electronica guy at all. And I am known to prefer metal, especially with a prog sensibility. But still, something about these tracks makes them work wonderfully. There is a magic blend or balance to them. I can’t analyze it but I do want to say that, against all expectations, they achieve somehow just the right effect for me. Very surprising.

So, just on the basis of these three tracks alone, I can say I am happy to have purchased the whole album. Sometimes a middling album has some hidden gems that redeem the whole effort, and that’s what happened here for me: you have to dig for them.

I hope that Delain in the future ditches whatever over time has become boring in their schtick and unhesitatingly follows their artistic freedom to make more uber-cool music like this.

Yes, my favorite two tracks here may indeed be “dance metal” contradictions, but of the most interesting human variety.