Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 13.09.2019
Production: Sascha Paeth
Album length: 47.01 min
Genre: Power Metal
Rating: 7.0 / 10
This album wouldn’t even be worth a mention if it weren’t for Sascha Paeth standing behind it, the renowned German producer, multi-instrumentalist and (first and foremost, an outstanding) guitarist and composer! Sascha Paeth, who has produced countless albums by bands belonging mostly to the “power metal” genre (over 200 in his career, including acts like Rhapsody, Avantasia, Epica and Kamelot), plays in Avantasia today and was once an integral part of the German power metallers Heaven’s Gate.
Masters Of Ceremony is his project, and with it Paeth has put out his very first album ever in a long-running music career (whether as a musician or as a producer).
What’s interesting is that, unlike with Avantasia, where he’s still joined by a “never-ending” battalion of assorted guests, this time around, for “Signs Of Wings”, Paeth has gathered a stripped-down lineup, one that could serve him as a proper band, should he decide to bring the album to the stage as well. The drums were played by Felix Bohnke (Avantasia, Edguy), the bass guitar by André Neygenfind (Avantasia), Corvin Bahn took care of the keyboards, while the lead vocals came from American singer Adrienne Cowan of Seven Spires. Counting Paeth, that makes five people in total.
“Sign Of Wings” doesn’t surprise with its chosen musical direction. What it embodies is truly old-school power metal stuff, which today sounds worn-out and dated and fails to get the listener, on meeting the substance, to so much as slightly raise one of their eyebrows. Throughout the album we get pure-blooded power metal charges full of predictable development, with detours toward neo-classical elements of the music, where a symphonic and operatic component is clearly built in. Interesting as that is, though, Paeth didn’t want to overdo it with orchestral arrangements. He wanted to make as directly addressing a power metal record as possible, one that buckles under a frontal, puffed-up assault of virtuous neighing guitar phrases, is predictably packed with Paeth’s ultrasonic solos, while the songs, as expected, lean rhythmically on the precise cannonade of a march dictated by the double bass drum pedal. Where It Would Be sounds like it slipped out of the studio debut of Sonata Arctica, and Radar like something Paeth dragged out of the dusty Heaven’s Gate archives after many years. Then there’s the predictable ballad Path, which bores you to tears over a good four minutes.
Adrienne is an incredible singer. Basically the main attraction of the album, and her vocal contribution overshadows even the guitar work by Sascha Paeth. Over the album’s running time, Adrienne tries out a whole range of singing approaches, including an utterly guttural, beastly tone (one that tears through your skin right from the opener The Time Has Come), all the way to proper gnarly screeching, fit for the musical territory of bands like Jinjer or post-Gossow-era Arch Enemy, though with her vocal acrobatics she mostly sticks to the clean operatic singing that dominates the album. She can go extremely high, effortlessly carrying her vocal power from register to register. At times there’s actually too much vocal, and in her extreme, shrill highs it can even get annoying at moments. Especially since the compositions are so painfully predictable.
The production is also extremely mathematical. It’s a lot of copy-pasting that delivers a sterile coldness, since the repetitions are mathematically cloned (identical to themselves), and the record loses its organic feel and warmth entirely.
Paeth has basically shown up to the party a good 15 years late with this one. He’s certainly gone all out on it in true perfectionist style, and all in all, the record is by no means bad and will surely win over the hardened power metallers, however many of them are left. Its problem is that it never develops a distinctive, recognizable charisma, that it drowns in generic templates, and that there are currently so many more interesting acts in the metal world, boldly fusing metal’s subgenre labels and keeping the genre constantly evolving, that the outdated “Signs Of Wings” isn’t worth wasting your time on. Unless, of course, you’re one of those rare, pure-blooded power metal fans.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
01. The Time Has Come
02. Die Just A Little
03. Radar
04. Where Would It Be
05. My Anarchy
06. Wide Awake
07. The Path
08. Sick
09. Weight Of The World
10. Bound In Vertigo
11. Signs Of Wings
Line-up:
Adrienne Cowan – vocals
Sascha Paeth – guitar
Corvin Bahn – keyboards
André Neygenfind – bass guitar
Felix Bohnke – drums
