Style: symphonic power metal, rock opera (clean vocals)
Review by: Sam
Country: France
Release date: 6 April, 2021
Power metal is one of my favorite genres. Heck, it’s probably my favorite, bar prog metal. Which is why it was incredibly weird for me to find out that the last power metal release I reviewed was Starborn’s debut Savage Peace, a 2019 release! Following that realization I took the first decent power metal album I could find on our spreadsheet. Hence came Avaland, a French outfit. Turned out it wasn’t prog at all, which is against our blog ethos, but instead I got a fricking metal opera! Close enough, right?
The two-word combination of “metal opera” should immediately bring Avantasia to mind. And indeed, this is clearly inspired by Sammett’s band. There’s a very impressive cast of singers for a debut that came out of nowhere like this, including Zaher Zorgati from Myrath and Zak Stevens from Savatage among others. But among all these great singers, I found lead singer Adrien Gzagg the most impressive. He has a very good sense of melody and great emotional range. The vocal hooks on the album are numerous. Sometimes he goes loud and he has immense power and clarity. It only takes the title track opener to convince of his vocal ability as it demonstrates his entire repertoire, setting a very high bar for the rest of the cast to follow.
And I could say the same thing musically, as the opener is one of the album’s best songs. It’s high-paced, it’s catchy, it’s cheesy as fuck, and it’s absolutely glorious. Just an excellent display of songwriting, bringing a great vocal performance, excellent instrumentals, and a lovely solo in the bridge. Lyrically it speaks of magic, phoenixes, and basically every power metal fantasy cliché you can think of.
And really that’s what this album is about: the glorious power metal cheese. It’s all the clichés in one, and they pull it off really well. This is the major key power metal that all the serious metal dudes hate. The focus is on the vocals and the upbeat feeling over the riffs, coated by bright synths that also really bring the cheese. Basically everything I said about the first track can be said about the rest of the album as well. It’s full of extremely catchy choruses and cliché fantasy lyrics. There’s a solid rhythm section with a nicely audible bass serving as a good backdrop for all the vocal prowess. During the ballads the cheese is even thicker. For example the background “woah”s in “I’ll Be Ready for Your Love” are like an extra layer of cheese on a quattro formaggio pizza. It’s such an incredibly sweet ballad your teeth are sure to fall off in the process.
One thing you might have noticed during this review is my lack of focus on the guitar parts. It’s not that they’re bad by any stretch – they’re very solid – but it highlights a general qualm I have with power metal like this. In many parts they feel like they’re part of the background instrumentation to put the emphasis on the vocals. Much like with most Avantasia, the riffs really aren’t all that interesting, and the guitars seemingly only have something to do during the lead parts. In my eyes power metal is at its peak when there’s a balance between the cheesy melodies and the steel from the riffs, and with this band the balance skews much to the former. The solos were very tasteful though, albeit not mind-blowing from a technical level.
I think my hesitancy with this record also stems from that despite how well everything’s done, the lyrics are very on the nose, and just really, really cliché for the genre (and often in poor English – though that could be forgiven as it’s not their native tongue), and it doesn’t seem to be presented with much irony or self-awareness. As someone not super deep into the genre, this could really detract from its potential.
Overall though, for a debut album, Theater of Sorcery is a very impressive piece of work. Avaland showed us they could nail the core sound of the genre in one go with an extremely professional presentation (I forgot to mention the mix – it’s great!). For what it attempts to be, there’s very little you can argue about. Most of my complaints stemmed from what I think about this style of power metal at large. If you’re into the Avantasia-side of things, be absolutely sure to listen to this. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Recommended tracks: Theater of Sorcery, Escape to Paradise, Rise from the Ashes
Recommended for fans of: Avantasia, Edguy, Lorenguard
Final verdict: 7.5/10
Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Metal-Archives page
Label: Rockshots Records – Website | Facebook
Avaland is:
– Adrien Gzagg (vocals)
– Lucas Martinez (guitars)
– Christophe Feutrier (guitars)
– Camille Souffron (bass)
– Leo Mouchonnay (drums)
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