Review by Saxy S for Avantasia - Moonglow (2019)

It’s been three years since Tobias Sammet has gotten the project Avantasia back into the studio. And the last time he did it, he created Ghostlights, an album that I still go back with regularity to this day, and an album that I would consider to be one of the best albums overall during 2016. Of course Tobias has never not failed to impress me with his songwriting and calling on big name collaborators, but I’m still waiting for that one album to really push me over the bar on this project; one that make me put Avantasia in the same category as Ayreon. And given the massive disappointment that was Within Temptation’s last album, I was in some desperate need for some hard hitting power metal. Did Tobias get there with Moonglow?

Well, yes and no. At points on this album, Avantasia may have made some of their best individual tracks. And that’s hard to do considering how excellent the title track from Ghostlights is. However I do feel like this album has a lot of filler material; not necessarily bad, again I don’t think Tobias could make something outright bad, but not memorable in the slightest. So yeah it’s a good album, not a great one.

So let’s start off with the performances on this album. Because a part of what will sell this album for you will be the cast members and how they are used. And this album does have a few returnees, including Jorn Lande, Michael Kiske of Helloween, Geoff Tate from Queensryche, Bob Catley and Ronnie Atkins. The new voices are Eric Martin from Mr. Big, Candice Night from Blackmore’s Night, Hansi Kürsch from Blind Guardian and Mille Petrozza from Kreator.

The last of those names was obviously the most intriguing one. How is Tobias going to incorporate a thrash metal vocalist into Avantasia? Well, look no further than the second track, “Book of Shallows”. Lots of minor harmonies and down tuned guitars make it one of this groups darkest tracks to date, but when that bridge comes in, it sounds like it was composed specifically for Mille to sing over. And the subject matter is matches his growling tone as well.

Other notable features include Candice Night providing a beautiful counterpoint to Tobias on “Moonglow”, Michael Kiske on “Requiem for a Dream” and Hansi Kürsch and Jorn Lande on “The Raven Child”, an epic track that uses dynamics and swells all throughout the first half of the track leaving you wondering when the heaviness will come back, and it leads to one of the best outros on this album.

Now the one thing that I will say about the production of the album is that too many of the singers have very similar timbres to one another and it makes it difficult to recognize one from the other unless you have a lyric sheet open in front of you. Take Geoff Tate for example. While I did enjoy the piano interlude “Invincible”, “Alchemy” had the two voices sounding almost identical to each other. Even Ronnie and Jorn sound pretty similar on “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” or “Starlight”.

The other thing is the synthesizer choices. All of these retro, 8-bit sounding synth choices don’t make sense on an album that is supposed to be a futuristic space opera. A personal pet peeve of mine was the clicking that occured during “Moonglow”, but the stuttering synths on “Starlight” and the aforementioned faze synth “Lavender” is a big misstep.

The rest of the instrumentals hold together quite well. I like the minor harmonies and down tuned guitars on tracks like “Book of Shallows” and “Requiem for a Dream”, they seem like the thing that Tobias wanted to do on Ghostlights but never got the chance to do. The dynamics on “The Raven Child” give a feeling of epicness that I really dug. “The Piper and the Gates of Dawn” is also pretty epic in scale. And I even dig “Starlight”, despite those problems with the synths, a short and straightforward but still great sounding power metal track.

Then there’s “Maniac”, a cover of the Michael Sembello track from the movie Flashdance that was thrown onto the end of this album. In the context of the albums themes, it seems ridiculous that Tobias would include this, but at the risk of losing validity to what I’m saying, I really like this cover as a single. Tobias and Eric Martin have some decent chemistry and there harmonies flush the tune out.

Now onto the lyrics and themes. And there are a lot of passing references to Ghostlights, like on the opening track “Ghost in the Moon”. But now the protagonist is trying to escape the earthly realm that they are trapped in and wish to escape to the moon; the reasoning is that the protagonist is fearful of the light and the people who ridicule him.

This album contains a lot of references to older literature, no track more prominent of this than “The Raven Child”, which references both Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven” and “Karbat” by Preußler. Since the protagonist is trapped in this world, they must first learn how to fly before they can be free. And this carries on through to “Lavender”, when the protagonist is told that you will ascend to the moon like flames.

But then the stakes are brought to a screeching halt on “Requiem for a Dream”, a track which Tobias has not mentioned if it has anything to do with the movie/novel of the same name. But it brings up an interesting concept. You see, in that novel, the characters have their dreams taken away from them because of their substance abuse. And the protagonists eyes are opened to the reality that is in front of him: there is no black magic that will give him wings to escape from this world. He is trapped, permanently, in this prison until the end of days.

It’s a lot to unpack here, but Tobias manages to create this story through the words, but also the instrumentals as well. Not surprisingly, this story requires some knowledge of the works that it’s cross referencing, otherwise the concept is going to be lost in the translation, which I do appreciate, but it means that the people listening who don’t know the referenced material will be lost. I think it would be like a Coheed and Cambria album, but not trapped in its own universe.

So as a whole, look I don’t want to come on here and say that Avantasia made a dud. Because they didn’t. This is some very good, sometimes even great, power metal and Tobias always manages to pull off hiring a murderer’s row of talent. But something about this just didn’t feel right. The moments of downtime felt really down and less engaging than those of other Avantasia albums. Perhaps that’s just a result of having higher expectations. But it’s still a good album, “Book of Shallows” will probably make a best songs of 2019 list come years end, so yeah check this out.