Style: Progressive Metal, Symphonic Metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Symphony X, Epica, Unleash the Archers
Review by: Doug
Country: Switzerland
Release date: 7 July, 2023
Well, here we are. It’s been just over a year since I joined The Progressive Subway, and roughly a year since my first look at Atomic Symphony and their 2022 album Hybris. At the time, I expressed uncertainty over the album’s pacing, feeling that it might be incomplete or imbalanced without its promised follow-up. Now that the foretold Nemesis is here, and with the benefit of 2023 hindsight, I can see that pacing should have been the least of my concerns. As it turns out, a frontloaded album with most of its intensity packed into the first half is much preferable to one where such exciting moments instead are rare and fleeting.
Nemesis reminds me much more of the band’s underwhelming debut, Redemption, than it does its own first half and counterpart. Whether the fault lies more with the album’s production or its composition was not immediately clear to me, but right from my first listen I could tell that one or the other (or both) had left the music feeling hollow and lacking in comparison to what Atomic Symphony had shown themselves capable of on Hybris. Although they at least still present meaningful melodies in the chorus sections, the pieces in between almost all feel a piece (or more) removed from achieving any meaningful depth of sound, something which Hybris largely excelled at. Instead of being drawn in and immersed in the mood of the music, I feel pushed away every time I hear what sounds like a single guitar playing a boring rhythm over unexciting drum fills.
It’s not enough to get me excited about the album as a whole, but the complete picture at least isn’t absolutely bleak. Jasmin Baggenstos’s powerful voice still commands attention, but feels much weaker without strong instrumental backing, and her strength alone is not sufficient to carry the album and build it back up to the intensity of its predecessor. Occasional flashes of brilliance show that this is still the same band that produced Hybris, that they’re still able to grab the listener’s attention with a brief grandiose refrain, but they are evidently unable to maintain that quality consistently. As soon as one can latch onto the passing moment, it’s yanked away, replaced with more of the same unthoughtful filler.
After all that, the only impression I can come away with is a negative one. Despite a handful of ear-catching phrases, most moments which should feel grand and epic struggle to collect their gravitas when the segments leading up to those moments failed to lay the groundwork and get the audience into the mood for something so grandiose. The climax of “Nemesis II: Arrival,” for instance, with its long, slow buildup – perhaps intending to echo the emotional closing of the prior album – lacks development, opting mostly to repeat the same phrases rather than expand the song’s meaning with new lyrics or lay out new melodies to deepen the atmosphere. Too often throughout the album, the different parts don’t line up well, especially between the vocal melodies and the backing rhythms, feeling at times like each portion was written and recorded before fully knowing how the other would sound.
The lyrics on Nemesis return several times to this question and theme: “Am I a god or a slave?” Although the speaker ultimately dodges the topic (“I am a god yet a slave”), I conclude much more confidently that Atomic Symphony, at least in their songwriting, are slaves to some nameless, capricious god. Its whims hurl the musicians back and forth, to and fro, one moment channeling their passions through thoughtful and expressive passages, the next flailing their way unproductively through a section of unnecessary and unsatisfying dissonance. The end result, a series of unconnected phrases laid end-to-end without enough justification to call them a cohesive album, disappoints, especially in contrast to the artists’ prior highs.
Recommended tracks: Just listen to the first two minutes of Nemesis II: Arrival and convince yourself the whole album sounds like that
You may also like: Ostura, Darkwater, Divine Ascension, All Things Fallen
Final verdict: 4/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Atomic Symphony is:
– Jasmin Baggenstos (vocals)
– Roberto Barlocci (guitars)
– Carlo Beltrame (keyboards)
– Thomas Spoegler (bass, guitars)
– Marc Friedrich (drums, backing vocals)
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