March 2021 Feature Release – The Guardians Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The Guardians has been nominated by Xephyr. It's 2001's classic debut album from Tobias Sammet's highly regarded German power metal outfit Avantasia entitled "The Metal Opera".

https://metal.academy/releases/3680

I did my review, here's its summary:

From 1998 to 2000, Edguy vocalist Tobias Sammet was dreaming of starting his own metal opera project, and he knew that was the right time to fulfill his vision, with an explosion of new amazing bands and the rise of metal veterans from the late 80s. It was his greatest opportunity to collaborate with many different music from new and old bands from the power metal scene. He and his recruits have united for the massive project that is...Avantasia! The band members are each from many brilliant power metal bands; Tobias Sammet (Edguy), Henjo Richter (Gamma Ray), and Markus Grosskopf (Helloween), plus Rhapsody of Fire drummer Alex Holzwarth. Amazing stellar musicians, though the guest singers are awesome too, including former Helloween vocalist Michael Kiske (credited as "Ernie"), the harsh growls of Virgin Steele vocalist David DeFeis (NO, I don't mean death growls, I mean a bit like ZP Theart (DragonForce) having a cold that makes his voice as gravelly as Tom Waits), Ralf Zdiarstek, Within Temptation's Sharon den Adel, Rob Rock, At Vance vocalist Oliver Hartmann, Angra's Andre Matos (RIP), Gamma Ray vocalist Kai Hansen, and Stratovarius' Timo Tolkki who contributes spoken vocals. This powerhouse of musicians and vocalists help unleash the epicness of these songs, and would continue to shine in Part II. That's right, there a Metal Opera Part II!! The second part might be different but both parts have great content contributed by many musicians. A brilliant project thought of since the year Edguy's debut was released, 1997, The Metal Opera has done its part in saving metal from dying down and gave the genre and many bands more life!

5/5

Tobias Sammett creating the concept album/rock opera project Avantasia was a blessing for heavy metal. While Arjen Lucassen was creating more progressive concept albums with the group Ayreon, Avantasia was more traditional power/symphonic metal, making far easier to digest and more accessible. And despite this album serving as a warmup for what would come over the next two decades, it quickly became a classic. I personally don't agree, as later projects called upon far more noticeable guest features, and the songwriting became more fluent. As it stands, I would never put The Metal Opera above Into The Electric Castle, but if you want sweeping symphonic metal with epic tales of folklore...well you could listen to almost any power/symphonic metal album. But Avantasia were destined for greatness and The Metal Opera proves that.

7/10

Ok so I think we're all aware that European power metal & I don't see eye to eye but I committed to giving "The Metal Opera" a good Aussie try by really focusing on it over the last couple of days & I'm reasonably pleased I did because I have to admit that I don't actually mind it. My first impressions weren't amazing for a couple of reasons though. Firstly, there are very few legitimate riffs on offer here as this material is completely vocal driven. The simple power chord or tremolo-picked backing work from the rhythm guitarists is not something that I'm usually comfortable with as it all sounded pretty tame to my untrained ears. The second thing that initially put me off was the lop-sided tracklisting which offers a significantly stronger B side. My lack of interest in much of the A side saw me putting my walls up on first listen & it took me a couple of revisits for the album to fully open up. But open up it did & I'm pleased to say that I eventually found the soaring vocal harmonies to be a bit of a drawcard. 

Honestly, I couldn't care less about the storyline & concept but the album can just as easily be listened to as a regular album because it's not obviously structured as your classic filler-ridden concept record. It's also not all that obvious that there are loads of guest vocalists unless you're familiar with the original intention of the album as many of the singers sound very similar to each other. The use of symphonics isn't over the top either (which I'm very thankful for).

Overall, this album isn't ever going to be a favourite for me but I respect the talent & ambition of Tobias Sammet & found it to be a generally enjoyable listen that further confirms my broader musical evolution over the last decade or so. I mean I never would have gotten through my first listen back in the 80's or 90's but now I find myself being capable of making an unbiased judgement call on a European power metal record which is quite the achievement for this ol' extreme metal fanatic.

For fans of Kamelot, Edguy & Stratovarius.

3.5/5

So, the truth is that I picked this because I don't really care for this album all that much. Avantasia and I go way back, with The Scarecrow being the first album I heard by them and it took me quite a while to check out their supposed masterpiece The Metal Opera. It looks like I first rated it about 5 years ago with a staggering 2.5/5, which was a massive disappointment at the time because I was (and am) such a huge Avantasia fan. So fast-forward to now, I thought that The Academy would be a good place to revisit it just to hear some other opinions and to see I'd have a change of heart. 

Well...not much has changed, it turns out. I feel like The Metal Opera appeals immensely to fans of more classic Power and Heavy Metal, and I can't say that I've ever been a massive fan of early Helloween, Gamma Ray, or anything in between. Hence Avantasia's earlier material really falls flat for me in a lot of ways compared to The Wicked Trilogy or their most recent album Moonglow. Even though the Avantasia songwriting is present front and center, everything sounds so basic at the end of the day. Even on his debut album Tobias Sammet doesn't push the riff boundaries almost at all, and shallow riffs are one of the only big complaints I have about Avantasia as a project. The solos are still fantastic and there are certain parts that really shine, but at the end of the day this album is just a ton of similar fast chugging like Daniel alluded to. I certainly like it on some tracks, but on future Avantasia albums it feels like Sammet got better at filling the monotonous dead space created by his somewhat basic riffing structures. 

I mostly listen to Avantasia for the vocals and all-star guest lineup though, and Sammet really takes over this album in a sort of annoying way. Don't get me wrong, I like Sammet's voice, even though I can easily see how he can get grating after a while, but wow, it's sometimes hard to even remember any of the guests' parts on this. It doesn't help that the lineup is much different than modern Avantasia, with the vocalists being a product of the time considering this was recorded at the tail-end of the 90's. There are still massive names on here, from bands like Angra, Gamma Ray, and Helloween, but I think my issue with them is that they blend in with Sammet to a ridiculous degree since they're all high-register Power Metal vocalists. Rather than the contrasting harmonies and characters you get with vocalists like Jorn Lande, Russell Allen, or the one-offs like Hansi Kursch or Tim Owens, you just get a lot of vocal parts that sound like varying degrees of Tobias Sammet. The harmonies are still extremely well written and they work for what they're going for, but I can't look back on the vocal lineup on this album and be impressed when tracks like "The Raven Child" exist nowadays. 

For being a supposed Metal Opera this album always felt extremely choppy to me too, with the transitions between songs sometimes being completely amateurish (see "Breaking Away" into "Farewell"). It definitely feels like there's some grand adventure going on, but the interludes are so scattered and somewhat useless that any semblance of story progression kind of fades away after a while. The orchestral breaks like "A New Dimension" are well done but they sound dated to me, like a knock-off version of a full piece. Plus the symphonic elements take a pretty large backseat for most of the album, only supplying a chord every now and again in the background to create a fantasy/heavenly sort of atmosphere. 

Even though I feel like I'm being overly critical, I can instantly point to a lot of flaws that I think this album has. The singles are still solid, with "Serpents in Paradise", "Breaking Away", "Farewell", "The Glory of Rome", and "Avantasia" being great songs in my opinion, but it stops dead there. "The Tower" isn't the bold and dramatic ending that others claim it to be, "Sign of the Cross" is pretty forgettable, and "Inside" is incredibly skippable after the first few spins. I think I appreciate this more than I originally did a few years ago, but I'm going to hold fast to my original score because it's obvious that I can go on and on about how The Metal Opera isn't exactly what I expected it to be even still. At most I can see myself bumping it up to a 3 given how many singles I like, but I still don't think it works as an album overall. 

2.5/5

OK, I guess I must be going soft, because there was a time when I would have eviscerated this album and spewed venom and bile over it's steaming remains. But, fuck, I actually quite enjoyed a fair bit of it's runtime - Farewell being the only track that I truly hated (and that is really awful). But the Bruce Dickinson-mimicking vocals aren't too bad, some of the riffing is decent and there are some pretty good solos. It is pompous and overblown, yet it's still quite endearing in a way. Look, I won't be listening to it on hard rotation, but I may feel like returning to it in the future (maybe when I'm feeling in a partucularly good mood!) and I wouldn't turn it off if it was on.

Shit what am I saying?! Where are my Khanate and Burning Witch albums ffs. I'll be watching fucking Pixar movies next!

oh, 3/5.. (I think).

.. or maybe 2.5/5