Atlantean Kodex - The Course of Empire (2019)^{Release ID: 12744}

This undying (sub)genre of epic heavy metal continues to offer up a handful of bands that seem to further the longevity of a style of metal that has been around now for 40 years plus.  Whether it is the flamboyant gestures of Visigoth or the more stoic delivery of Atlantean Kodex, the style keeps cropping up and the nerdiness just continues to maintain momentum somehow.  It's a niche corner of the metal market nowadays and as such one that is so very easy to fall into the cracks between exponent of a "lost" art form and a mere tribute act.  

What turns out to be Atlantean Kodex's third full-length (my first experience of them) sounds to me to be an album full of the necessary passion for true, epic heavy metal.  The outliers are all here.  Lengthy songs, chronicles in fact of heroism and monumental historic events in some far away land or world.  At its core the album sound is big!  There's enough elements of doom to fill the air with the density of the guitar tone, enough meat in the drums to pound a weighty and substantial rhythm throughout and carry that sense of majesty, pomp and circumstance that underlies most of the album.  And then there's the vocals...

I think it is fair to say that the vocalist isn't a bad as such, but it is clear to me that his voice seems to pale in significance to the rest of the instruments being deployed around it.  The fact is that whilst Markus Becker can hold a tune, he is not strong enough in the vocal chords department to hold his own alongside such huge riffs and thunderous drums.  Even when layered and/or backed, the vocals just don't cut it.  There are times when the lyrics are delivered in a very clunky (and definitely not cult-cool) manner which makes some tracks seem quite amateur if I am honest.

Still though the music does make up for it and some of the songwriting (accepting it does get bloated) is bang on in some places.  Whilst the pacing gets a little cumbersome on occasion it never ruins any track, but it does make you wish for some shorter tracks everynow and again that aren't interludes or outros.  So there's definitely work to be done still after class for these German metallers, but they certainly have the heart for it even if aspects of the delivery don't quite come off that well.

Atlantean Kodex try to plough the same furrow as epic doom bands like Solstice and Cirith Ungol, but they haven't the songwriting skill of either of these bands and end up turning out hour-long albums of bloated heavy metal that just kind of blurs into one long LARP soundtrack. It does have some decent moments, but few and far between and the whole is just too damn long.