Dark Metal band W.E.B. from Athens, Greece has been around since 2002 and, including this, has released 3 full-length studio albums and 1 EP all the while enjoying some reasonable recognition in their homeland - especially so on their previous album "Jesus Heist", which eventually went up to the 8^th spot in the Greek Metal Album sales list. Not a bad feat, but can their follow-up albums "For Bidens" match or surpass the expectations built up, and will it be their ticket to make a real entry upon the international scene?

Returning listeners will undoubtedly find themselves at home quickly, as there haven't been any remarkable sound changes since their latest album "Jesus Heist" or their 2012 EP "My Storm Upon You"; it's still an intriguing mix between the darkness of TYPE O NEGATIVE, the harshness of ROTTING CHRIST and the melodic nature of DARK TRANQUILLITY. However, it doesn't take an audiophile to hear that they've gone ambitious and upped the production quality - which wasn't even bad to begin with - which makes their dark music sound better than ever.

But that ambition goes beyond just the production and the sound, and can be heard in the songs themselves who are absolutely unafraid to breathe, experiment and explore new territory while having clear individual touch that makes them stand out from one another. And at the same time this hasn't been achieved at the cost of a distinct sound; rather the album feels and plays like a unified creation and with a distinguishable overarching sound. And that's impressive considering how many and how varied the influences are - which consist of everything from Black to Gothic to Industrial to Progressive and all the way to Symphonic Metal - and how hard it is to create a working balance not just for each song but for the entire album as a whole all the while shaping a distinct sound that surges through everything from beginning to end. You could pick out a W.E.B. song in a crowd, and that's always a good thing.

The songs themselves are at large good or great with only a couple lacklusters: The title track "For Bidens" with its Melodic prowess and empowering use of Symphonic elements along with the majestic "The Prince Of 1000 Frozen Suns" stand as clear stand-outs, and they've accompanied by two strong and slightly more assault-driven tracks in the form of "Nightmares In Disguise" and "Eligos". However just as there are 2 stand-outs and 2 strong seconds, there are also 2 relative failures in the form of "God Plays-Dead" and "Malaise". The former of the two is the slowest track on the album and marks a return of the rather boring Peter Steele-inspired clean vocals that can be heard on W.E.B.'s previous work and is beyond that weighted down by too much Industrial elements and a completely underwhelming chorus that is the center of the song. The latter of the two suffers a similar problem, but is faster and harder with some hit-and-miss inclusions of female vocals that in the end only makes the song turn into something of a mess. Beyond those are 2 rather excellent (I'm sensing a lot of duality in this album) instrumental tracks that work as build-up, and the song "Night Funeral", which is a song that almost appear to try and summarize every extreme W.E.B. is capable of playing in, resulting in an interesting - but not necessarily that good - track that I'm not entire sure what to make out of.

Finally we come to where the ambition becomes overly evident: The final 3 tracks that make up the "Clamor Luna Trilogy"; a 3-part Dark Metal Opera that flawlessly incorporates beautiful Melodies, powerful Symphonic elements, some really dynamic and Progressive song structures and every inch of atmosphere they could fit into its 15 minutes and 24 seconds of glory. If taken as a unified whole, and that's the only way to do it justice, the "Clamor Luna Trilogy" is the best song on the entire album and easily the most distinct.

All-in-all, I'd say this is a great album. Sure there are some hiccups in the form of songs you'd rather forget, but in between the great production, the remaining really strong songs and an overall stellar performance on just about every aspect of the album, there's really no reason to not call "For Bidens" a success that easily places itself as W.E.B.'s strongest album to date and among the more memorable albums of 2014.