Vola - "Friend of a Phantom"
Reminding us how great their last album was
Vola (typically stylized in all-caps) is a Danish Progressive Metal band, and a relatively recent discovery for me. The band originally formed back in 2006 and released their debut LP in 2015, but I didn’t find them until their third album, 2021’s Witness. Witness stood out as one of my favorites that year, ranking 3rd on my Top 40 list in a year that was slam-packed with incredible Prog Metal releases.
Witness, I’ve found, was more glossy than Vola’s first two albums — a smoother, more polished iteration of their sound, which fused Prog Metal’s unpredictability with djenty guitars and electronic elements layered into the mix, occasionally drifting towards dreamy Prog Rock or warped Psychedelic sounds. “These Black Claws”1 leaned into Trip-Hop with a mind-blowing feature from Shahmen, and is one of several songs from that album which I regularly NEED to hear again.
Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to this album.
Friend of a Phantom carries forward the glossy sound of Witness, resulting in some of the most beautiful, chilling musical moments I’ve heard this year, particularly on the run of tracks 3-5 (“We Will Not Disband”, “Glass Mannequin”, and “Bleed Out”). “Glass Mannequin” feel light and spacey enough to arguably fall more into the realm of Prog Rock rather than Metal; “Bleed Out” is more intense, and flips a switch halfway through to bring in the heavier vibes; “We Will Not Disband” strikes a firmer balance.
One of Vola’s strengths across their first three albums is their ability to play with light vs heavy elements. Tracks like “Bleed Out” and “We Will Not Disband” are prime examples of that skill. Still, the album generally feels a bit lighter than expected — more airy. Sure, it starts out with “Cannibal”, featuring the harsh vox of Anders Friden (In Flames), then “Break My Lying Tongue”, “Paper Wolf”, and “Hollow Kid” are decently heavy, but for several of these there’s a subversion — an atmospheric drone or piano-style keys or the vocals, themselves, flying higher than you expect. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it does mean that there are few truly heavy moments on the album.
Their other major strength is in their melodicism and hooks. And there are several good hooks here — most notably in “Bleed Out”, “We Will Not Disband”, and, to a lesser extent, “Paper Wolf”. But there are only just a few, the ones mentioned here, that feel like they could stand up to the absolute hookfest that was Witness. There’s more to a song than writing a good hook, but it’s the hooks that make the songs stick and keep your audience choosing to play your music.
And it doesn’t help that the last third of Friend of a Phantom is the weakest: “I Don’t Know How We Got Here” is good, but it’s the shortest track on the album at only 3:33 (in Metal, that’s laughably short). “Hollow Kid” and “Tray” are just okay, at best, though, and the former is just too repetitive.
Sometimes I need 2-4 plays of a record to really begin to understand its depth and nuance. In this case, I needed time to begin to see its weaknesses. I thought it was a clear top ten album after my first listen, but now I’m worried it might not even see the top 40.
Friend of a Phantom is still a solid album, in my opinion, but it’s weaker than its predecessor (and much of the criticism above is geared towards expressing that mild disappointment). Granted, that was a very high bar to clear. I still strongly recommend this album for anybody looking to dip their toes into Metal. The last two tracks are its only real weakness, and it would be a good way to become familiar with some of modern Metal’s styles and sounds without being overwhelmed; the amount of electronic instrumentation in the mix helps with that balance, I think.
Rating: Teal Green
The song tackles the subject of addiction, which is why everything, from the instrumentation to the lyrics, seem warped, off somehow.
The video linked here was shot during the pandemic, which is likely why Shahmen does not appear in the video.