Avantasia – A Paranormal Evening With The Moonflower Society (Nuclear Blast)
I first came across this pigeonhole-defying act whilst watching a live webstream of a Bloodstock I couldn’t attend in 2015, (back when they did those sorts of things) and although at the time I had never heard of the band, I loved the music and was won over immediately by the entourage of performers sharing vocal duties with leader Tobias Sammet. In the intervening years I have worked my way through the back catalogue and most definitely consider myself a fan.
For the uninitiated, Avantasisia started off as an Avant-Garde operatic power metal side project for Edguy frontman Sammet - initially as just a single song, then an album, telling a full-blown concept story in operatic form with some quite big-name guest vocalists taking roles as characters throughout. The Metal Opera was enough of a hit to justify a sequel a year later, and the guests kept getting bigger and bolder. After a few years break, we got The Scarecrow, which had a slightly different approach and is the template for everything that has come since, as the core instrumental section of the band has been the same ever since. That album saw them scale this thing up into a live spectacle world tour to boot, with as many of the contributing guests as can be crammed into a tour bus in tow.
Let’s face it, when your second ever live performance is as the headliner is to a sold out Wacken Open Air in 2008, you must be doing something right. And Avantasia has been ever since. In fact, they’ve long since leapfrogged Edguy, which seems to be on enforced hiatus. But then this whole has ever been much greater than the sum of its parts…
The usually up-beat brand of Operatic Metal may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I love them unashamedly and judging by their continual growth in chart impact globally and the inexorably incremental size and scale of their tours, so do a lot of other people. Every three years we get a new album with some old friends and new ones tentatively contributing for the first time, before having such a ball that they become a part of the circus and join the touring too.
Sammet has a gift for writing songs for these guests that encapsulates the sounds from the artist’s ‘classic period’, distilled by his formidable songwriting into one of the greatest songs they may have contributed to. Careers have been rebooted via this technique, and I have no doubt that if Sammet had not used both Michael Kiske and Kai Hanson early on in the project’s history, they would never have worked together again, and you certainly wouldn’t have the Pumpkins Reunited incarnation of Helloween back with us in all their glory and Geoff Tate sounds better now after three albums and a tour than he has for decades.
This one though, feels a little different…
As well as singing, song-writing and so much more, Sammet also plays bass in the studio and that deep sense of structure is one of the reasons that this always feels both so cohesive as what is effectively his solo career whilst being the greatest metal ensemble act we may ever see. Most Avantasia albums work on two levels – the catchy, ear-worm surface hooking you in by the way that whichever star is brought in seems to have been given a new lease of life, then there’s the deeper appreciation that comes from repeated listening and which makes you realise the more subtle musical and song-writing complexity underpinning this.
This time around that surface catchiness is slightly more elusive, but then in the main this is a much darker and moodier piece than many of its predecessors, whilst still feeling uplifting and vibrant. That said, each song positively demands a repeat listen, and slowly reels you in. But then after nine albums over twenty-one years things need to keep moving forwards. The other surprise is that with the exception of the ensemble-delivered finale Arabesque, all the songs are in the punchy territory of three to four minutes in duration, which means it does not outstay its welcome by overdoing the Progressive elements as has become more often in recent albums. In fact the only thing that’s overlong is perhaps the album’s title…
Less is definitely more this time out, and another noticeably reduced level of input comes from all these guests. With repeat turns from the always welcome Michael Kiske, we also have stalwarts Bob Catley (Magnum), Jorn Lande (Jorn and half of what Frontiers Records produce), Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids) Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche) and Eric Martin (Mr Big Ego) back again. Add to this are Nightwish’s Floor Jansen and Primal Fear’s Ralph Scheepers making their Avantasian debuts, but despite this frankly spectacular roster, the guests do not dominate the songs.
This time front and centre vocally throughout is Sammet himself, delivering what feels like a truly personal solo album under the Avantasia banner. Fans of the his more power roots are going to like this a lot, as it sounds musically more like a blend of the best things both this project and Edguy were up to at the turn of the millennium, whilst bringing along all the evolution, flourish, grandiosity and sheer fucking performance of the more Avant Garde aspects that sprung for the from The Scarecrow onwards.
How much of this is down to the fact that the core of the writing, recording and general tone of the last few years were dominated by Covid as he was forced to work alone remotely for the bulk of the last three years? Who knows, and indeed who cares, when the net result is this good. It feels both retrospective across the project’s history and fresh and new, which is no mean feat after twenty plus years.
The highlights personally include The Wicked Rule The Night (with Scheepers), The Inmost Light (because Kiske fucking rules) and the deeply subtle and moving ballad with Floor Jansen (Misplaced Among The Angels). But to be honest I cannot fault a single song on here, each of which could probably work as a single with the exception of the closer. I know the three or for spins I have given this are not enough to scratch the surface, but I know that’s not a problem as I’m going to be coming back to this one a lot I suspect.
This may just be Sammet’s best one yet, so absolutely 10/10