Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Timo Tolkki's Avalon
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2014
Runtime: 50:30
Rating: 3.5/5
Plenty has already been said about Timo Tolkki. One of Finland’s finest guitar virtuosos, composers and producers, the man who committed the original sin known as Stratovarius back in the eighties, kicked off a brand-new musical project two years ago. Avalon is the Finnish maestro’s answer to Avantasia, the project of his German buddy Tobias Sammet. Last May, Tolkki dropped Avalon’s studio debut, »The Land Of New Hope« (2013). Barely a year has gone by and its successor is already here: »Angels Of The Apocalypse«.
This album is a concept record too. Over a long career, Tolkki has proven more than once that his soul is a dark one, so for creative inspiration he once again went back to his favorite theme: the apocalypse. It’s necessary, you see, to »save« planet Earth, which has been humiliated and defiled by a virus called humanity, with its immorality and boundless material greed. The virus of humanity has to be washed off the face of Mother Earth. Only that way can the debt be repaid. In 2020, four angels of the apocalypse descend to Earth and take bodily form as the four basic elements: fire, earth, water and air. The angels’ disappointment in humanity’s delusional deeds of the last 150 years is boundless, so they unleash a cascade of natural disasters that shake the foundations even of those »civilizations« most responsible for the unsustainable state of absolute debauchery among those who only take, and the resulting total spiritual orphanhood and complete stripping away of any moral compass. Pandora’s box is opened to bring the planet back into balance and restore its primal look of virgin purity!
Tolkki is a master of crafting metal operas. He’s already proven that in the past. A classically trained guitarist and one of the founding fathers of modern European power metal, he has, much like on this project’s previous album, gathered a crew of seasoned vocalists around him. They all have one thing in common: their approach brings the required drama and theater into the songs and paints them in all kinds of moods, depending on what the concept’s message calls for! This time the female vocals take the dominant role, as Tolkki has handed them more vocal duties than on the debut. They step into the spotlight especially in the second half of the album. Tolkki has once again divided up the vocal roles masterfully and thought of everything with great finesse: vocal lines that fit the characteristics of each singer perfectly. With the exception of the opening prelude Song For Eden, the ballad moments (The Paradise Lost, High Above Of Me) and the closing Garden of Eden, where symphonic, operetta-like elements dominate, the focal point of Tolkki’s songwriting is his proven formula of fusing power metal with symphonic elements. Anyone who knows the musical backgrounds of the vocalists on this album, as well as Timo Tolkki himself, and likes them, will prick up their ears in no time once they dive into the contents of »Angels of the Apocalypse«. That much is indisputable.
Tolkki certainly isn’t inventing a musical revolution with the second studio album of the Avalon project. He keeps swimming in familiar musical waters that he can navigate with his left pinky. In the production he has once again neglected the low end and organic warmth, which is hardly surprising. That flaw is typical of the production on classic Stratovarius albums too. Simple as that. One of the typical traits of power metal is that guitar phrases are often propped up by the »rolling« of double bass drum pedals, while the warmth and organic feel of the bass lines get neglected in the process. But that obviously doesn’t bother Tolkki one bit. Just as it doesn’t bother him that he again picks vocalists who struggle with putting the stress in the right place in English lines within the melodies (this time that’s the Italian Fabio Leone, back in the Stratovarius days it was Tolkki’s Finnish colleague Timo Kotipelto).
All in all, »Angels of the Apocalypse« seems a touch darker in how it builds its leading moods, and in places it’s even produced »noisier« than its studio predecessor, which fits hand in glove with the gloomy concept of the new release. Tolkki is so experienced and routine that he can put together, in a single year, an album that credibly stands up to basic quality criteria. The generic element is clearly there, but attention is often pulled away from it by the »mid-eight« passages, where we can revel without limits in supersonically tuned guitar solos. »Angels Of the Apocalypse« is, first and foremost, tailor-made for the most hardened fans of European symphonic power metal. It doesn’t deliver any musical high points, since its compositions follow the tried-and-tested, much-used recipe a la Timo Tolkki.
Lineup
Timo Tolkki – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Tuomo Lassila – drums
Antti Ikonen – keyboards
Nicholas Jeudy – orchestrations
VOCALISTS:
Floor Jansen
Simone Simons
Fabio Lione
David DeFeis
Zachary Stevens
Elize Ryd
Caterina Nix
Production
Timo Tolkki
Tracklist
1. Song for Eden
2. Jerusalem is Falling
3. Desiogn the Century
4. Rise of the 4th Reich
5. Stargate Atlantis
6. You’ll Bleed Forever
7. The Paradise Lost
8. Neon Sirens
10. Angels of the Apocalypse
11. High Above of Me
12. Garden of Eden
