I suspected when I reviewed the reissue of Within Temptation's debut Enter back in 2015 with a 3/5 score that I might not be getting the best the band had to offer. With the release of Resist, I'm happy to report I was right. Sure, this is gothic metal and that brings with it some modernisms like down-tuning and screamy vocals but what can't be denied is the band's knack for vocal hooks. Sharon den Adel is given plenty to work with on Resist and does a fine job on songs like "Supernova," "Mad World" and "Mercy Mirror" where she essentially opens your skull and inserts choruses directly into your gray matter. I'm not going to lie and say this is the heaviest music you'll ever hear, however. The guitars are muted and seem happy to coexist with the keyboards, so musically there are similarities with gothic rock like Evanescence as well as some of the synthwave stuff floating around. None of those things makes this album any less catchy and if you are still singing songs after it is over, the band has obviously done something right. I expected something with only vague notions of what it wanted to be and middling songs and what I got was an album from a band confidently walking the line between metal and rock and doing it by virtue of quality songwriting.
