Avantasia - "Here Be Dragons"
Dragon on the cover = Power Metal
Avantasia is a project that is reliably big and bold. It is a passion project led by Tobias Sammet, whose main band, Edguy hasn’t actually released an album in over a decade now.
But Avantasia, a collaborative metal opera project, has dropped four albums, including Here Be Dragons, since Edguy’s most recent effort.
It seems pretty clear where Sammet’s focus has been.
And with this release, both of his projects are tied at ten studio albums apiece. Despite that Edguy is the older project, Avantasia’s star has risen noticeably higher, which may be why Sammet has decided to focus more fully on it. Or he just has more fun with it.1
They’re both primarily Power Metal, but Avantasia operates somewhat like Arjen Lucassen’s Ayreon, in that each album brings in a slew of guest vocalists and musicians. The difference between them being that Ayreon focuses very heavily on the story, while Avantasia focuses on the fun. Sammet sings lead vocals throughout any given Avantasia album, with the guests supporting in various degrees, whereas Ayreon albums assign each vocalist a character or role.
The guest list for this album consists of:
Geoff Tate (Operation: Mindcrime, ex-Queensryche)
Michael Kiske (Helloween, Unisonic)
Tommy Karevik (Kamelot, ex-Seventh Wonder)
Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids, Nordic Union)
Bob Catley (Magnum, ex-Hard Rain)
Adrienne Cowan (Seven Spires)
Kenny Leckremo (H.E.A.T.)
Roy Khan (Conception, ex-Kamelot)
Jorn Lande’s absence on this list is noticed and felt, for the record.
Let’s just get into this here, as I don’t really have any further context to add. The album starts off with “Creepshow”, which is a fun intro, but also a bit weird because it takes this Power/Heavy foundation and turns it into a poppy/boppy jam-out. “Welcome to the creepshow” is a great line to have in an album’s opening track, but what’s so creepy? This song sounds like a good time!
I do enjoy the song for what it is, but it isn’t remotely what I expect when firing up an Avantasia album.
It’s followed by the album’s title track, “Here Be Dragons”, which is both the album’s longest track and its best song. It’s a big, epic-sounding track, and Sammet and Tate are solid together, despite that both of their voices are this sort of smoky tenor which makes it hard to tell who’s singing at times (Tate’s voice has a little more body, and he has this signature warble on long-held high notes).2
The epic tone dwindles away, for the most part, after “Here Be Dragons”. The energy remains, but no subsequent song really lingers on the right sort of tone. “The Witch”, for example, brings in a bit of that sort of moodiness during the verses, but goes full major chord in the verses and undermines any sense of gravitas it was building. The Gregorian choir in the background can’t save it, nor can Tommy Karevik.
Bob Catley’s intro on “Bring On the Night” is uncomfortable, and then the song turns into a pseudo party anthem? According to a note on Genius, the song is dedicated to Tony Clarkin, Catley’s bandmate in Magnum who passed last year. It explains Catley’s mournful, out-of-tune intro, but the shift in tone strikes me as odd.
“Unleash the Kraken” has an odd moment near the end where a deep, distorted voice speaks the title and calls it a “Kray-ken”.
At large, the album just becomes too much of the same. There are unique moments in each song, but those are overridden by what feels like identical copypasta’d tonality and energy. And in spite of that, there are no seriously grand moments like we typically get throughout previous Avantasia entries.
And even the best song — “Here Be Dragons” — has some really high pitches that are just on the verge.
Here Be Dragons is still leagues better than the Empires of Eden catastrophe I suffered through last year, but the bar for this project is also a lot higher. I’m afraid Sammet just hasn’t cleared it here.
Rating: Yellow
Redditor Version_1 has a different take:
“Tobias' ideas and wishes when it comes to guests were altered forever when Edguy went into hiatus. Suddenly, Avantasia is no longer his side project where he gets to sing and write music for and with great guest vocalists. The last two albums, when it comes to the way guests are selected and used, feel way less like the old All-Star ensemble with Tobias as main singer but more like a Tobias Sammet album with some guests he invited.”
I’ve played Operation: Mindcrime start-to-finish literally dozens of times, so the fact that I have trouble being certain who is who here really troubles me.