Now that we’ve broken Exordium down into its bare components, lets look at if for the wretched, measly little soul that it is. Or is it? Well, one thing’s clear since Mark has left the band [and its not just the inclusion of the green Blake’s Seven style jumpsuits], and that is that After Forever have gone less Gothic. There are fewer choirs and fewer classical parts because those have all been taken over to the ‘other side’. You can see them all sitting in a room debating it, can’t you. "Guys, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much more of Mark." "No way, does this mean we have to write all the songs ourselves now?" "How do you do that?" "Dunno, but we can rehash some old Randy Crawford stuff and try to make it sound poignant." Genius.

The new After Forever stuff is much more guitar-driven, but not to the point where we’re being suffocated by power chords. There is still a tinge of the old AF song-writing magic in it. However, up till now any AF album has started with an instrumental, and this one is no different. But what’s surprising is that it’s not a classical one. Instead, they’ve gone for a more metal instrumental, which is a little disappointing, but which bleeds nicely into the first vocal track, Beneath, which is an absolute cracker. As soon as I heard it I fell in love with AF all over again. Sure, Mark may have gone to do his own thing, but this means that all the other lurkers in AF have been forced to the fore and the result is some pretty damn good song-writing. The only bad thing about this track is the middle part where they try to do some news quoting over palm-muted chord chugging, which might inspire the odd Dutchie [which is most of them] with a sense of awe, but it doesn’t travel well, certainly not over here, and the result is laughable. Apart from that, it’s all first-rate.

The next track, My Choice, is another brilliant number with the same message that AF [and now Epica, surprisingly] have been preaching for years, the whole idea of choosing your own path and going your own way. Hopefully the idea is that if they say it enough times it might actually sink in. Unfortunately, the rest of us listen to it, think, "how true" and then go back to our day jobs. Which AF don’t do, for reasons that I won’t go into here. The final original track is the wonderful Glorifying Means, the only track with grunts in it, and a fabulous chorus. But what makes all these tracks so magnificent more than anything is the fantastic vocals of Floor, who has never sounded so good. As soon as I heard Beneath, I was reminded just how amazing she is, and having got used to the vocals on Decipher, it’s great to hear her sing something different. She really lifts the music and truly is an extremely talented vocalist, a joy to listen to.

So it’s a little bit of a let down that the next two songs aren’t originals - a cover of Iron Maiden’s The Evil That Men Do, which Floor does surprisingly well [for a girl, yes] and Randy Crawford’s One Day I’ll Fly Away, which is an odd choice, and they could have really made something of the way the music climbs the scale at the end of the chorus, but hey, you can’t have everything. Still, this is quite a treat for six tracks. OK, it’s a bit cheeky to call it a ‘mini-album’, but there’s still some stuff here for the enthusiastic AF fan. My only reservation is that after Invisible Circles, everyone will forget about Exordium since it was just brought out to bridge the gap with Decipher. It’s not an album that will travel the timelines well, since though its tracks are good, there’s nothing truly sensational here. However, what it does show is that in spite of Mark’s absence, AF still have the ability to make excellent music.