Ex Libris - ANN - Chapter 3 - Anne Frank

EX LIBRIS

ANN - CHAPTER 3: ANNE FRANK

Self-release

Released: 15th November 2019

Our journey through time with Ex Libris is almost over, from England's monarch Anne Boleyn, to the daughter of the last Russian Tsar, Anastasia Romanov, we now travel with the band who now takes us to the 1940s during the period of World War II, where we'll here the story of Anne Frank, famously known for her diary that records her days of hiding from the Nazi Germans in their attic apartment in Amsterdam.

Ex Libris promises to honor the life of Anne Frank with careful research and musical challenges to share her story through the heavy progressive sounds.

Tracklist:

The Diary

The Annex

The Raid

The final chapter of the trilogy starts with "The Diary" of WWII, with nature ambient of birds and the bells chiming as a beautiful piano driven ballad of foreboding notes follows. The voice of van Giersbergen narrates this tale in a soft and beautiful yet sorrowful manner, singing the story of Frank's origin and life in the city Amsterdam where they have given her and family shelter from the horrors of Nazi Germany while the symphonic string sections creates an amazing cinematic atmosphere that wasn't really much utilized in the previous chapters. Following track, "The Annex" takes a harsh bombastic turn of thunderous riffs at the introduction before ramping up rhythms of electrifying progressive swirls as the vocals of van Giersbergen once again displays her amazing prowess of operatic notes. The finale is a 10-minute track title "The Raid", the unfortunate final days of the young girl and her family. The very crunchy introduction with emotional melodies within the rhythmic whirlwinds progressive melodies of urgency and haste while the sirens roars in the background warns of the incoming German raid. In the final section of the song, the band goes all out in a very heavy breakdown of sweeping guitar solos and synths that really amps up the progressive elements, as they finish off with operatic vocalizations and symphonic metal. Throughout the chapter, we had lots of voice-over work from Dianne speaking in her mother language portraying as Frank reading excerpts from her diary which really adds a natural touch, perfectly executed as her story hits close to their home in the Netherlands.

Ex Libris have gone above and beyond in this cinematic finale to the stories of "ANN". Each part, the members have put a lot of dedication to piece together a wonderful and amazing historical music piece with elements of heavy metal and cinema, and a big bravo to Dianne for her research and voice acting portraying each figure told on the album! The way they have released this album was a great idea, instead of releasing a complete album of 9 uninspired songs, the band released them as parts as they take time to come up to match the theme of the settings and instruments for the next one.