Tag: review

January 3, 2026 2025, Best of Post a Comment

The Metal Pigeon’s Best of 2025 // Part Two: The Albums

I can’t begin to describe just how relieved and happy I am to present the best albums of 2025 list, because damn was this a challenge to put together. Easily the hardest list I’ve had to winnow down in all the years of doing The Metal Pigeon, I had twenty one shortlisted nominees and it took me weeks of listening, relistening, and making notes (that I couldn’t make heads or tails of when reading back later) just to narrow them down to ten. I spent another week or so tooling around with the top ten list order several times, just to make this even more difficult for myself. At one point, I was flipping coins to decide who to put at the number ten spot just because I couldn’t decide and felt guilty — thankfully, I ceased this madness and decided to put in the actual work of relistening to the albums in question back to back and having them compete against each other to decide who would make it. Yes I realize I have a problem. And the thing is, I didn’t see this coming, because these lists over the past few years have come together relatively easily in comparison, but for whatever reason 2025 had a slew of great albums that when it came down to it were very hard to rank amongst each other, with the exception of perhaps the top three on this list. I’ll keep this short and sweet, only to mention a reminder to check out the Best Songs list if you haven’t yet, subscribe to the MSRcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and to thank anyone and everyone who came to this blog and read something I wrote. I’m always amazed and grateful that people do so. Hope everyone has a great new year!

10. Avantasia – Here Be Dragons

I know what you’re thinking, big surprise, an Avantasia album lands on The Metal Pigeon’s year end list, but hear me out for a sec — even I’m surprised that Here Be Dragons landed in the top ten. Up until I started reviewing this year’s releases in preparation to assemble nominees for this list, I didn’t think this album was a serious contender for most of this past year. When the album first came out in early spring, I expressed quite a bit of criticism towards it, and much of that still stands in my opinion as I write this. Roy Khan was squandered as a guest vocalist on “Everybody’s Here Until the End”, Geoff Tate’s guest spot on the title track was underwhelming, causing me to wonder if his role in the cast of guest vocalists is really necessary anymore, and I longed for this album to hit harder and heavier than it did (largely due to the intentionally rounded 80s prog influenced production approach). There were two songs here that were solo sung Tobias Sammet tunes in “Creepshow” and “Unleash the Kraken”, thus calling into question their presence on an Avantasia album where the whole schtick is supposed to be guest vocalists on every track. But for all its frustrations, this was also a collection of seriously brilliant songwriting, some of Sammet’s best in years actually. He conjured up magic for Bob Catley once again in “Bring On the Night”, delivered a Best Songs listee in the awesome rocker “The Witch”, delivered a convincingly heavy Priest-ian turn in the aforementioned “Unleash the Kraken” (shades of Edguy’s “Nailed to the Wheel” on that one), and crafted one of those trademark magical, epic choruses in the title track that just made it an undeniably awesome song. This entire album was in my Spotify generated Your Top Songs of 2025 playlist, and that fact snuck up on me, that this album stuck with me throughout the year despite my most critical eye on it. Easily his best effort since Ghostlights, Sammet’s talent as a songwriter is the high tide that raises all ships, even if they’re leaky.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

9.  Novembers Doom – Major Arcana

Its probably not a surprise to see this one here given how much we were raving about Novembers Doom’s twelfth album Major Arcana a couple months back on the MSRcast, and even here on the blog; but this was clearly a shoe-in for this list, the question was where it would land. Don’t think that because its back here at the nine spot that my affection for it has lessened, because it did not — however there is a likelihood that I played this so much in September and October that I burned myself out on it and it fell back a touch when I went back to review all the nominees. The unfortunate quirk about having to cobble together these lists is that you have to defend against recency bias and not forget about older records, but also consider how often you kept coming back to an album throughout the year, and if you go hard on listening to an album when it comes out and overplay it, that latter facet may begin to suffer. There’s also the reality that Novembers Doom do not make bad albums. They consistently make very good to great albums, and that kinda works against them sometimes because no one will be surprised to learn that Major Arcana is the most satisfyingly heavy record on this list, just hitting you repeatedly with sledgehammer riffs and a thunderous rhythm section. The best songs listee title track should be proof enough of this, but that wasn’t the only song that could’ve made that list, consider the empowering “Ravenous” and its teeth gritting circular riff progression. Vocalist Paul Kuhr is a titanic force throughout, and his ability to blend together harsh and clean vocals as a result of some mystifying physiological freak of nature ability is a singular talent, there’s no one else quite like him in the extreme metal space. Consider this one of the band’s truly great albums, a top three for me alongside Hamartia and The Pale Haunt Departure. The execution here was perfect, the thematic framework of the songs representing the major arcana cards in a tarot deck was truly inspired, and this band seemingly has no bottom to their well of creativity.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

8.  Opia – I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep

Sailing under the radar of most this year was this potent debut by new gothic doomsters Opia, its members hailing from Spain, the UK and elsewhere. Reminding me at times of Draconian’s lush melancholic melodies, and often of Swallow the Sun’s brutal heaviness during the more violent moments, Opia weave these influences into their own sonic brew of patient tempos and carefully painted atmospheres. Their greatest strength is in these modulating, gradual builds that interject washes of color into their nominally charcoal grey palette, as on “Man Proposes, God Disposes” (what a title!). It contains my favorite moment on the album just before the three minute mark where it seems like sunrays are slowly illuminating some unknown pit of darkness. That Swallow the Sun vibe really hits during “On Death’s Door Part I”, not only for vocalist Tereza Rohelova’s Mikko Kotamäki-ian screaming harsh vocal tone, but for guitarist and main songwriter Phoenix Griffiths’ penchant for crafting riff progressions that are sneaky earworms, operating as microhooks to counterbalance the permeating atmosphere they layer on via Jorge Afonso Rodríguez’s artful keyboard arrangements. This balancing act flourishes on “Days Gone By”, where Griffiths cuts loose with some sharp edged riffs that get close to outright heavy metal despite carefully navigating through the somber atmosphere. On “The Eye”, Rohelova’s clean vocals are rich and clear, carrying with her performance a feeling of introspection that reminds me of some of Martina Astner’s vocals on Therion’s Vovin album. I think that my immersion into old gothic metal over the past year and a half really put me in the headspace to be receptive to Opia, because their music requires patience for sure, and I don’t always have that in great supply. I had been keeping my ears open for interesting goth metal or even gothic tinged metal, and Opia has a take on the genre that certainly is a crossover to a more extreme interpretation of it as opposed to say Sentenced and Charon, but like their fellow gothic doomsters in Messa, they are redefining the boundaries of the genre in subtle but important ways.

7.  Saor – Amidst the Ruins

Scotland’s Andy Marshall returned this year with yet another album of spiritually powerful, epic folk metal in Amidst the Ruins. Even that description fails in adequately describing the kind of all encompassing musical journey that Saor takes you on as you sit back and let this album wash over you. Like its best albums list making predecessor Origins three years ago, this albums most unforgettable moments are not necessarily its heaviest, but more its elegant sweeps into blissful melodic transcendence. Whether intentionally or not, Marshall managed to combine Origins bagpipe draped, cinematic epic grandeur with the grounded, earthen toned warmth of 2019’s Forgotten Paths. This merging of these two approaches is heard straight away on the opening title track, where a juxtaposition of the beautifully melancholic sweep of violin, viola, and cello artfully play counterpoint to the tumultuous violent metallic sequences layered underneath. Marshall’s magic talent lies in being able to bring together these apparently dichotomous elements, sounds, and moods together in perfect harmony, rather than separating things out into heavier and softer passages. The ending minutes of this song were one of my favorite bits of ear candy this year, that beautiful melody line echoed on lead guitar and Ella Zlotos’ beautiful low whistle playing. And while it narrowly missed landing on the best songs list, album closer “Rebirth” is in the running for my favorite Saor composition ever, its blending of blackened folk metal with some progressive song structuring captivating me for its fourteen minute run (tellingly, it does not feel that long). Its coda, with Zlotos adding her gorgeous, sonorous vocals to the mix is one of those aforementioned transcendent moments, reminding me of shades of Enigma, and leaving you with an emotional ripple of peace, calm, and serenity, a very strange thing for even a folk metal record to achieve, let alone a metal record. But Saor are proving time and time again that they are not a typical folk metal band.

6.  Ancient Bards – Artifex

It’s a credit to the talents of keyboardist/main songwriter Danielle Mazza and the incredibly talented Sara Squadrani that not even a six year gap since their last release, Origine – The Black Crystal Sword Saga Part 2, could derail what has been a picture of consistency in quality if not quantity. Picking up where they left off on the last album, Ancient Bards sound is indeed more cinematic and expansive than their earlier days where you could decipher out influences such as Rhapsody of Fire, Luca Turilli, Derdian, and Vision Divine. Those days of virtuosic guitar driven power metal have been slowly scaled back over the years into a more symphonic metal driven style that reminds one more of Epica and perhaps even Dark Moor’s mid-career transition post Alfred Romero joining the band. This album had a relatively quiet release reflecting perhaps the change in the band’s status as a touring outfit to a more stationary, studio based project, with little fanfare leading up to it (after years of speculative silence) and little press done to promote it save a few revealing Mazza interviews where he hints that more albums are to come (fist pump). This is a dazzling, adventurous, and emotional listening experience, from the Nightwish-ian dramatic pulse of “My Prima Nox”, through Squadrani’s passionately sung paean to devotion in the glorious ballad “Unending”, to the stately aura of “Minsters of Light”. The virtuosity is still a part of the band’s dynamic (bassist Martino Garattoni’s work is stellar in particular, he also of Ne Obliviscaris), with guitarists Claudio Pietronik and Simone Bertozzi spinning off Luca Turilli approved blasts of neoclassical shred, particularly on the soaringly epic single “Soulbound Symphony”. The bards may not travel the adventurous roads as often as they used to, but they’re still telling fine tales.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

5.  Månegarm – Edsvuren

I don’t think I had as much fun and pure joy listening to any album in 2025 the way I did with Manegarm’s Edsvuren. This is not the Swedish folk metal trio’s first time on the best albums list, landing on it with their previous two albums in 2019 and 2022, and they manage the hat trick here, a run that I’m not sure any band has accomplished in the history of me writing this blog. There’s something about Manegarm’s approach over the past half decade plus that has set it apart from even their older, more blisteringly black metal tinged albums that I enjoyed back in the day. Modern Manegarm is the sound of a band that knows who they are sound wise, never tries to be anything other than that, and yet finds a way to broaden their sound within that framework in a way that sounds natural, welcoming even. My favorite byproduct of the band’s experimenting in this way has been all the beautifully recorded and produced acoustic Swedish folk music that weaves its way in and out of this album, both on the heavier songs as a dynamic change of pace, and on its own as standalone balladry. They’ve employed a cast of excellent singers to contribute to these more lush, beautiful moments, one of whom over the past two albums has been vocalist Erik Grawsiö’s own daughter Lea, and Ellinor Videfors who has been a frequent contributor over the past four albums. The latter’s performance on “Rodhins hav” alongside Erik Grawsiö is a magical duet, a piece of music I figured had to be a traditional Scandinavian folksong, but no, its a Manegarm original, that’s just how good these guys are. Yet lets not ignore the metal in folk metal, because Manegarm continues their incorporation of straight ahead heavy metal songwriting into their mix, scaling back on extremity a bit to allow their music to breathe more. The instrument separation that occurs as a result allows masterpieces such as “En nidings dåd” to have swelling, monumental emotional build ups with epic payoffs. There is a case to be made that Manegarm is crafting the best music of their career right now, as well as some of the finest folk metal ever recorded.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

4.  Messa – The Spin

Every year there seems to be an out of left field album that sidewinders its way onto this list, and this year Italy’s gothic doom quartet Messa were the culprit. Their strange and mysterious album The Spin is not a debut, its actually their fourth full length release since 2016, but it’s likely the album that most of us were introduced to the band with, and for good reason. Standing out from the field of bands in both the gothic and doom subgenres, Messa’s take on these styles is inspired and fresh, using elements of one to highlight the other via clever juxtaposition. The charcoal grey doom riffs that permeate “Fire on the Roof” stand in sharp contrast to singer Sara Bianchin’s eerie, goth drenched vocal melodies that ring of Cocteau Twin’s Elizabeth Fraser and even Siouxsie Sioux. Bianchin turns in incredible performances throughout the album, such as on the gorgeous “Immolation” where she borrows some of Kate Bush’s light etherealness to weave together melodies that are hypnotic and meditative. There are parts of this album that dabble in musical styles such as jazz and country (check the opening bars of “Reveal”), and those kinds of disparate elements usually will throw me completely of course while listening to most albums (I’ve had trouble with Ihsahn’s albums that do this for example), but they didn’t phase me at all throughout listening to The Spin. Why? Because from the opening minutes of “Void Meridian”, Messa get you to drop your guard, the song itself already unconventional and enticing, and my mind immediately went to Oh, this is different but good different, and you sit back and let the album wash over you instead of demanding something from it. I remember hearing this very shortly after its release and taking note of it as something to maybe discuss on the podcast as a charming breath of fresh air, but long before we recorded that episode I was binging it full time. It stuck with me throughout the rest of the year and it was among the first albums from the nominee pool that I was certain belonged on this list.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

3.  The Halo Effect – March of the Unheard

The Gothenburg legends that form the ranks of The Halo Effect crafted something in their sophomore album that lived up to the hope that many of us had for this band when they first came together a few years ago. That means an album that is permeated with the sonic characteristics that call to mind that incredible but all too brief era in the mid-to-late 90s when the melodeath explosion left incredible releases littered all across our collective laps. The Gothenburg scene was in retrospect a small circle of musicians who grew up knowing each other, lived near each other, and some have even been in the same band with one another before. So it wasn’t a complete shock that Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquility fame, ex-In Flames’ classic line-up members Peter Iwers, Daniel Svensson, and Jesper Stromblad, and ex-In Flames and ex-Gardenian member Niclas Engelin (an equally incredible band who is tragically overlooked) would want to play music together. What is a shock is that after a debut album where they seemed uncertain of what this band was supposed to sound like, they managed to lock onto a musical identity on March of the Unheard that is hard coded with classic Gothenburg melodeath DNA, yet still sounds of the moment, a reflection of modern melodic death metal. This album crackled with intensity and a familiar warmth, in songs such as the uber hooky “Our Channel To The Darkness” with its Stromblad-ian trademark acoustic guitarwork decorating the intro to a phenomenal lead figure serving as the hook during the chorus. That detail of the guitar melodies driving the songwriting instead of vocal melodies, connects these songs to the subgenre’s foundations, as on “March of the Unheard” where the expressive lead guitar coda acts as the exuberant payoff after a turbulent buildup. When the band switches gears to let Stanne steer things with his richly melodic clean singing, as on “Between Directions”, they utilize lead guitar melodies as part of an informal string section along with the cello and violin to serve as a counterpoint to his vocal lines. I was excited two years ago when the young Minneapolis upstarts in Majesties released Vast Reaches Unclaimed, a purposeful throwback to the late 90s melodeath sound, but I’m even more excited by March of the Unheard, because it feels like a wormhole connecting us to the past, bridging two eras of melodeath together.

2.  Helloween – Giants & Monsters

Confident, assured, muscular, and joyfully playful at times, Helloween’s second album with the post Hansen/Kiske lineup is a gloriously vivid celebration of what makes this band so phenomenal in every aspect. Those of you with sharper memories might realize that I’m ranking this higher on this list than its self-titled predecessor was ranked on my 2021 list, and truth be told, I think I can confidently say that I think this is a better album front to finish. Is part of that due to its shorter run time? I do think that yes, things felt a little more tightened up this time around with its relatively short fifty minute run time (Helloween was by comparison an hour and thirteen minutes!), but it goes beyond album length — this is a collection of incredible songs, and while lacking something as jaw dropping as “Skyfall”, this feels like a more cohesive album overall. It begins with the charmingly Scorpions tinged “Giants on the Run”, with its flurry of tempo shifts reflecting its multiple personalities, its one of the best openers in Helloween history. Michael Wekiath’s “Savior of the World” is classic Helloween, the kind of high speed, off-kilter rocker that the Keepers were built on, and it feels like a sibling to Hansen’s own “We Can Be Gods”. The layered piano runs that underscore the chorus resound with pomp and grandiosity and also a sly wackiness that is in keeping with Helloween’s career long commitment to keeping their tongues firmly in cheek. When they do get somber, as on the epic power balladry of “Into the Sun” where Michael Kiske and Andi Deris cojoin their voices together to supreme goosebump inducing effect, the results are magical. I spoke at length about the best songs listee “A Little Is A Little Too Much”, but I’ll chime in to say that even though I played that song an untold number of times this year, it has lost none of its charm in doing so, and the same goes for the entirety of the album. This was an album that wormed into your head the more you played it, and Helloween has earned that kind of attention from me in a way that only a select few bands have.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

1.  Blackbraid – Blackbraid III

Like a bolt of lightning in a clear blue sky, Blackbraid’s third album struck with a primal energy unmatched by any other record I heard this year. This album didn’t just live up to the band’s potential hinted and teased out in moments on their first two records, it shattered all expectations completely. I simply did not feel that a black metal album could hit me with this kind of impact both as an emotionally charged experience, but also just as a metal fan wanting to proverbially bang my head. This album succeeds in achieving all of this because the songwriting of vocalist / guitarist / bassist Sgah’gahsowáh focuses on both crafting rich, evocative atmospheres and crafting finely honed metal tracks that are intentionally stripped down of anything unnecessarily complex to maximize headbangability (that’s a word isn’t it?). The former is integral to the album’s success as a complete listening experience, these interludes of acoustic guitars, crackling campfires, and animal sounds working together to create vivid sonic imagery that matches the evocative cover artwork. It gives this album a feeling of place, that rustic North American landscape that existed before highways and byways and gas stations. So much of the lyrical themes on this album are ruminations on the passage of time and the preservation of ancient memories of the way things were, or traditions that struggle to continue. These ideas are given life on the albums four instrumental pieces, each a vital part of this album’s connective tissue.

When the headbanging parts come up, they’re blistering in intensity, raw in their sheer rage and violence, yet delivered with the clarity that made latter day Immortal so damn awesome and compelling. The best song of the year, “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of my Death” is black metal perfection, a concentrated blast of energy with precision focus. Drummer Neil Schneider’s work throughout the album is stellar, but he absolutely crushes on this song and is a huge part of its success, his frenetic pace feels on the verge of going off the rails but manages to cling on for dear life. The snarling, animalistic intro to “God of Black Blood” shouldn’t work for most bands who would dare to attempt it, but it feels entirely of a place within this album, the perfect set up for the albums most fist pumping, neck hurting riff sequence. I also loved that melody wasn’t eschewed aside for straight ahead riffing, but played a major part in the composition of tunes such as “The Dying Breath of a Sacred Stag” and “Tears of the Dawn”, not only in adding to the memorability of their hooks, but providing a dose of color to what could have been a monotonal experience in lesser hands. I loved every second of this album, and when I listened to it, I did so from start to finish every time, wanting to be pulled into the world it was inhibiting and exploring rather than skipping around for my favorite bits like a greatest hits album. In my initial review, I compared it to great conceptual albums I’ve loved in the past such as Nightfall in Middle Earth and Epica, but truth be told I do skip around on those records quite a bit to bypass interludes. With Blackbraid III, the songs and interludes were skillfully woven together to create a complete listening experience that felt natural and grounded, and yet achieved cinematic grandiosity, a rare duality in itself, and deservedly the album of the year.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2025)

December 17, 2025 2025, Best of Post a Comment

The Metal Pigeon’s Best of 2025 // Part One: The Songs

I think I look forward to deciding and narrowing down my best songs of the year lists as much if not more so than my albums lists, mainly because the songs list is always a little off balance, a little quirky and perhaps even inexplicable. Sometimes songs will just stick with you no matter how much you’ve tried to shake them due to overconsumption, or you’ll realize that your nominee for best song of the year isn’t necessarily the best representative song on a given album, or better yet, your favorite song off an album will be loathed by many! I nailed all of those categories with this year’s Best Songs, and also as an added bonus I found this incredibly easier to put together than this year’s albums list which is the tightest race I’ve come across in ages for the top spot. Going to keep this preamble shorter than usual, only to add that if covers were allowed on the Best Songs list, The Halo Effect might’ve had two entries here with their renditions of Danzig’s “How the Gods Kill” and Broder Daniel’s “Shoreline”, they were just that damn good. Anyway, the list!

10.   Majestica– “Go Higher” (from the album Power Train)

Effortless, classic Europower with the Scandinavian gloss of Stratovarius and the gritty, galloping riffs of Gamma Ray and pre-Hellfire Club Edguy, Majestica outpaced most power metal artists this year with their Power Train album, and in particular, its standout album deep cut “Go Higher”. Seemingly overlooked while most of the general fan attention was directed at the title track and “No Pain, No Gain”, I thought this song should’ve been a single. Maybe its that Tommy Johannsson’s vocals here remind me of Timo Kotipelto circa Visions or Destiny era Strato, replete with a noticeable English as a second language accent thing happening which sounds so fitting and perfect for this style of power metal (the Sonata Arctica call and response backing vocal lines are also a chefs kiss). And lets not bury the lede here, part of this songs awesomeness lies in its lyrical theme, of a version of Back to the Future where our hero ends up in 1995 instead of 1955 (or 2015 for that matter). Johannsson’s gloriously triumphant delivery of the line “Hearing one man’s voice saying loud in the night, “I’m your density. I mean destiny.”” is a contender for lyric of the year. I’d like to think in this song our protagonist somehow got handed a copy of Land of the Free and decided to stick around for the late 90s power metal explosion that was soon to follow. Marty McFly would be proud.

9.   Brainstorm – “Garuda (Eater of Snakes)“ (from the album Plague of Rats)

Riding high on a late career bloom, Brainstorm are making their second consecutive appearance on the Best Songs list, having landed here in 2021 with the anthemic “Glory Disappears” off Wall of Skulls. That song was classic Andy B. Franck, an arms wide expansive bellow-worthy chorus that his muscular vocal delivered with satisfying aplomb, a reminder of just how incredible (and overlooked) he is within the world of power metal. This time however, Franck takes a bit of a backseat to the machinations of his fellow bandmates, particularly guitarists Torsten Ihlenfeld and Milan Loncaric, who deliver a Teutonic slab of concrete riffs, sounding like equal parts Accept and Kreator and making this more of a band centric effort. Franck’s brilliance shines through however with some clever vocal melody design in the delayed effect he employs on the chorus by waiting a half second before delivering “…Garuda!”. It wasn’t lost on many of us longtime fans that this song was a knowing nod to the band’s past via the inclusion of east Asian melodicism, insinuating that it was a close spiritual cousin to Brainstorm classic “Shivas Tears” from Soul Temptation, making this a headbangin’ full circle moment for everyone.

8.   Vintersorg – “Efter Dis Kommer Dimma” (from the album Vattenkrafternas Spel)

Even though Vintersorg’s first album in eight years was highly anticipated by yours truly, I was still turned ecstatic by the flood of nostalgia soaked dopamine this opening salvo filled me with upon first listen. Characterized by the trademark “ooohs” Vintersorg used to dish out like Halloween ear candy during the old Otyg days, this brilliant track brought me back to the comforting warmth of Cosmic Genesis era Vintersorg, just before the progressive metal overwhelmed his sound for the next many years and albums. This wasn’t an unexpected return, after all Vintersorg’s last album in 2017 was the sequel to Till fjälls, which saw him reincorporate more of his folk influences into his modern Vintersorg mix, but “Efter Dis Kommer Dimma” is a return to that sweet spot crossroads of folk melodicism meeting progressive songwriting as only Vintersorg can navigate. This is inarguably the catchiest song the man has written in well over a decade, and yet its still very strange and weird. The keyboard lines deliberately run contrary to the entire thrust of the rest of the song, and often the percussion seems to accelerate just a beat ahead of the riffs in what feels like a purposeful disruption of anything getting close to a standard song structure, but damn it all if that’s not the best hook he’s ever penned in the chorus. The lush layered harmony vocals from Wytch’s Johanna Lundberg are the whipped cream on the espresso in this folk metal doppio con panna.

7.   Avantasia – “The Witch“ (from the album Here Be Dragons)

This was a happy surprise, not because an Avantasia song made the year end list (it would be a disappointment if one hadn’t), but because the Tobias Sammet songs that usually make and top these kind of lists are the syrupy ballads such as “Alone in Myself”, or the cinematic epics, the pomp and grandiosity of a “Ghost in the Moon” or the breathtaking sweep of a “Restless Heart and Obsidian Skies”. But the best song on Here Be Dragons instead turned out to be its most propulsive rocker, “The Witch”, a Tommy Karevik co-lead vocal empowering this sleek chorus with his smooth yet muscular delivery. It was also a delight to hear him open the song by himself, making a break from the usual method Tobias employs where he’s the first one at bat and the guest follows up (its not a coincidence that “Bring on the Night” with Bob Catley singing vocals out of the gate was another stellar song on the album). The centering of Karevik gives this song a freshness that Avantasia deeply needs more of across its recent albums, and that’s nothing against Tobias himself who turns in his usual excellent performance here, but he plays more of a supporting role, and the result made this song pop upon every listen thru the album.

6.   Messa – “At Races“ (from the album The Spin)

One of the strangest entries onto any Best Songs list in the history of this blog, Italy’s doomsters Messa gnawed their way into my brain this year with tunes as mystifying and alluring as the fantastic “At Races”. I say they’re doom, but you’d be forgiven for questioning that description if you’re hearing them for the first time via clicking the YouTube link above. Their sound is a blending of so many different elements that its hard to parse them out individually, but one thing I know for certain is that I loved how Sara Bianchin’s vocals make her sound like Elizabeth Fraser’s younger goth sister, her airy, monotoned approach lending her style a detached attitude. She balances this with a little splash of Siouxsie Sioux, her vocal melodies firmly locked onto the tempo when it counts the most, as on the opening verses during the most riff centric sequences. Her bandmates paint with a sonic palette that is deep black and soft purples, at times pulling from these obvious non-metal influences but then keeping things grounded with the rhythmic attack of Dreamtime and Love era The Cult. As I indicated above, this song is by no means representative of the more metallic side of their attack that they unleash on other tracks, but its the track that made me sit up and really take notice that I was listening to something new and fresh.

5.   Novembers Doom– “Major Arcana“ (from the album Major Arcana)

The opening eponymous track on Novembers Doom blistering new opus Major Arcana, this masterpiece not only features a wide array of brilliant vocal stylings from singer Paul Kuhr, but is also one of the most satisfyingly catchy yet brutal slabs of aggression that any band has delivered this year. The refrain here is way more complex than first listen would suggest, considering that Kuhr switches up his dynamic vocal approach on a dime from line to line from blackened death growls to his characteristic baritone bellow. Often he crosses textures, his growls surfacing underneath his clean vocals, almost distorting them in what results in a convincingly chilling utterance of pure rage. Guitarists Larry Roberts and Vito Marchese lay down the wood with punishingly heavy riffage, particularly during the buildup to the chorus where they collide with drummer Garry Naples’ in a particularly devastating passage, Naples’ percussion throughout this song just a nonstop assault of energetic, creative fills that ratchet up the intensity. This was a statement song for one of the most compelling albums released this year.

4.   Månegarm– “En nidings dåd“ (from the album Edsvuren)

Manegarm finds itself landing on the best songs list for the second time with the remarkable “En nidings dåd”, one of those transcendent songs that halts your million thoughts a second anxiety brain and forces you to lock in on its bittersweet splendor. Their first time on this list was in 2022 for the gorgeous ballad “En snara av guld”, and though that song shares similarities with this one in it’s anchoring, mournful violin melody, “En nidings dåd” stands in sharp contrast as being one of the heavier and bleaker songs on Edsvuren. The best moment comes at the 2:50 mark when a layered clean vocals usher in a bridge that packs an emotional whollop, with an uncharacteristically hard rock styled guitar solo serving as the exclamation point a minute later, the contrast reminding me of a sunrise over the frigid December Scandinavian wilderness. This song captured my attention during my first pass through this album and although it vied for the title of the best song on the album with the ballad duet “Rodhins hav”, its dynamism and brutal yet beautiful dichotomy has earned its placing as one of the best songs of the year.

3.   Helloween – “A Little Is A Little Too Much“ (from the album Giants & Monsters)

I was a little surprised at the mixed reactions this single from Helloween’s newest album got upon its initial release, when to my ears anyway, its a classic Andi Deris penned Helloween single in the vein of so many of his songs from his time as the singular frontman of the band. Its uber hooky poppiness is a trademark of so many of his songwriting contributions to the band that I can’t understand why anyone would be caught off guard by that (if that’s the complaint), or was it that the lyrics here are a little too quirky and tongue-in-cheek (hmm…as opposed to other Deris singles such as “Lost In America” or “Are You Metal?” or even going back to the old days of Better Than Raw with “Hey Lord!”…my point exactly). I simply loved this song from first listen, and its still my favorite tune off a really strong album, and it leans into Deris’ strengths as a songwriter, that being a knack for memorable vocal melodies, nifty syllabic word play, and a hard rockin’ strut during the verses that hint of old Pink Cream 69. Easily one of my favorite Helloween songs of the last twenty years, I also loved that the band chose an old school approach to the music video with actual sets, props, and a silly “plot” that felt like it could’ve actually been on MTV back in the day (as opposed to the green screen, performance based, drone shot dreck music vids that get cobbled together in droves in recent years). In this case, a little effort wasn’t too much at all, but exactly what was needed.

2.   Ancient Bards – “Unending“ (from the album Artifex)

Longtime readers of the blog will already know of my unabashed love for power metal balladry (a primer for those of you who didn’t), and Italy’s Ancient Bards had already earned their place among the genre’s most gifted at this particular craft despite having a relatively short discography. If you’ll recall, their beautiful, dazzling, Disney-esque power ballad “Light” off 2019’s Origine landed at fourth place on that year’s best songs list, and I thought that it was unlikely that the band would ever top that ballad-wise. Stunningly then, they have managed to do just that with the stately, somber toned yet light on it’s feet “Unending”, a song that sees the band marrying the darker mood of “In My Arms” with the shimmering positivity of “Light” into a masterpiece of sweet ache and grateful melancholy. Keyboardist and main songwriter Daniele Mazza has a gift for crafting melodies that unfold with slow, patient subtlety and blossom into something greater than the sum of its parts — the cinematic nature of this song feels natural, inevitable. Of course, its artistry is woven together through Sara Squadrani’s soulful, inimitable vocals, someone who I would gladly listen to singing the phone book. Together her and Mazza are making a legitimate case for being power metal’s best current ballad writing duo, and I hope for our sake they never stop.

1.   Blackbraid – “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of my Death“ (from the album Blackbraid III)

As unlikely as it is to believe, this isn’t the first time that a black metal band has topped my best songs list, with Satyricon doing so in 2017 with the brilliant but strange “To Your Brethren In The Dark” — but it is the first time that a song which is so unrepentantly black metal in spirit, sound, and identity has sat upon this particular throne. To deny this song this placement would be to ignore its powerful magnetic pull it had as the album opener for Blackbraid’s astonishing third album (we’re obviously not calling an intro track an “opener” for anyone keen on nitpicking). Unapologetically wasting no time with its quick, stuttering percussion intro and diving right into one of the most teeth gnashing, ripping riffs on the album, the straightforward viciousness of the attack here sounds feral and unnervingly intense. Yet not unrestrained, because this is black metal that while redolent with classic tremolo riffing and all the tropes that come with it, feels sequenced with classic heavy metal in mind. I think of the theatricality of the grand shift at the 1:50 mark, with the announcement of the thundering “drums of war”, the downshift in tempo ushering in a glory claw at the skies cinematic bridge, all followed up with the very Quorthon esque solo at the 4:17 mark. If your experience has been similar to mine, you’ve heard so much black metal in various permutations over the years, and over time it all sounds so much like one another that you feel like you lost the thread of what you love about it. So when a primal, bloody, meat on bone experience like this reminds you of how cathartic this music can be, its like hearing black metal again for the first time.

November 5, 2025 2025, Blog related, reviews Post a Comment

The Obligatory Catching Up Piece

So in typical Metal Pigeon fashion, I’ve fallen behind on things I planned to publish, a result of my getting distracted by one notion after another and stopping work on one piece to begin work on another, and subsequently stopping again, yada yada yada. Recently I got set upon a topic that requires a bit more thought and dare I suggest, research, and its taken up all of the free time I allocate to the blog. So while that’s happening, I thought I’d do a quick piece rapidly covering all the new and noteworthy albums that have come out in the past few weeks and months that deserve commenting upon. I imagine that this is going to be the only one of its kind before we stumble into December and I’m scrambling to write up my year end songs and albums lists, so there’s probably going to be things coming out soon (the new Aephanaemer, Omnium Gatherum, and Blut Aus Nord albums) that will not get covered here because I don’t have promos for them. Its fine though, because I’m already drowning in a sea of new music and this is my attempt at coming up for air.

Lets talk about positive stuff first — the albums that really impressed me and that are in a consistent (if not constant) rotation for me since their release. Going to single out the new November’s Doom album Major Arcana here, because damn it all if this isn’t one of their best albums to date. And its always hard to judge Novembers Doom albums as a whole in relation to their catalog, because this is a band that simply does not make bad records. There are albums that don’t resonate or hit as hard as another, and certainly there are albums in their catalog that tower above all the others (Pale Haunt Departure for most, Hamartia for me), but Novembers Doom have been one of the most consistent bands in metal for a very long time now. The new album has one of the year’s best songs right out of the gate in the title track, a ferocious yet forcefully melodic epic that has a masterful performance from vocalist Paul Kuhr. Alongside the crushing “The Fool”, this is as unrelentingly heavy as Novembers Doom has sounded in recent memory, but their ability to showcase dynamic range and light and shade hasn’t diminished, as they illustrate throughout the album. I admit that I have been paying more attention to this album than others in part because we interviewed guitarist Larry Roberts for the MSRcast and Paul Kuhr on Metal Geeks, but the thing is, long after those were recorded, Major Arcana stuck around and has resurfaced as a craving that I have to hit play on to satiate.

In more rapid fire fashion, we just played these guys on the recent episode of the podcast but Manegarm’s new album Edsvuren is yet another in a string of incredibly strong albums from these folk metal veterans. Vibrantly energetic and confident, this is the sound of a band that understands its sound so perfectly that they’re able to experiment and broaden their range within those boundaries without ever sounding like they’re trying to be something they’re not. At times intense and blistering, and others beautifully serene and harmonious, this is everything that I think a lot of viking imagery based bands wish they could sound like but lack the musical identity to accomplish. If you’ll recall, this band’s last two albums have made my year end best albums lists in 2019 and 2022, and without spoiling things, its highly likely they’re going to find themselves there again in 2025. Similarly, the new Vintersorg album Vattenkrafternas Spel continues to astound a month now into listening to it, and it conjures up feelings of both nostalgic wistfulness and just real, raw excitement that the old master himself still has that magic whatever it is that defines his sound. With a sound that is uniquely his own, there is no real comparison one can make to any other folk artist except maybe with someone as idiosyncratic as Myrkur or Saor who have such distinct musical identities that make their music unmistakable. In some ways he is continuing where he left off from 2017’s Till fjälls del II, albeit with songwriting that feels more streamlined and flowing, less progressive in its overall structure. Opinions vary on Vintersorg’s more proggy albums, and I actually love his most progressive offering in The Focusing Blur, but I adore when he just lets the folkiness take over his sound and steer him to those Otyg roots as he’s doing here.

I’m also uncertain if I mentioned this on the blog, but a few months ago I traveled up to Austin to see German pagan folk artists Faun in a small, intimate venue called Come and Take It Live (its more charming than its name suggests). It was their first time in Texas, and it was a magical gig, definitely different from a metal show (they don’t have electric guitars in this band for starters) as they wielded a variety of instruments that I’ve rarely or never gotten to see performed live (such as the plethora of strange percussion hand instruments that I couldn’t even begin to describe). They were effortlessly charming on stage and they took a budding, curious casual fan in me into a die hard who sacked their merch table for two t-shirts and a hoodie I’m eagerly awaiting colder weather to wriggle into, but their new album wasn’t available until two months later. Those months elapsed, and I’ve been digging into said new album HEX quite a bit, itself much darker and experimental than some of their more major key adorned cheerful tunes that have the higher play counts on Spotify. My go to recommendation for anyone new to this band is to check out their pro-shot live show at Hellfest 2023, because seeing them live is an experience and that setlist is a perfect introduction to their catalog and vibe in general. Then if you enjoyed that, give HEX a shot with a fair warning that although it has catchy moments within, its a more mood driven affair, but one that is captivating to me for what its worth.

Okay, moving onto murkier territory… I don’t think there was anything I outright disliked that came out recently, but certainly there is stuff that I have mixed feelings about. Lets talk about the big one first, the new Amorphis album Borderland, which despite its refreshingly crushing and demonstrative lead single “Bones”, might be a contender for the biggest disappointment of the year, if not for the glum reality that I’m not entirely surprised by this outcome. With the exception of that truly fine single, this is a step down from 2022’s Halo, which itself was plagued with unevenness, but Borderland is mired in a mid-tempo morass that feels like a chore to slog through at times. There’s some moments that pop here, “Fog to Fog” has a evocative melody and strong hook working for it, and Esa Holpainen’s guitar work on “The Lantern” stands out as a highlight, but this is not enough. The band switched producers here to Jacob Hansen after many albums with Jens Bogren at the helm, and I’ll be damned if nothing sounds different with the change, but the notion of changing producers all of a sudden perhaps hints at the band knowing that they had to shake something up. So it should alarm them and critical fans as well that the band sounds like they’re spinning their wheels, and maybe its because keyboardist Santeri Kallio has written the majority of the songs here — all of which are of course keyboard melody forward and relatively similar in pacing and tone.

Pick a song from Borderlands at random and it sounds fine, sometimes catchy or otherwise pleasant enough, but string them together as a full length album and this is an exhausting, unmemorable listen. And look, I’m not suggesting a vocalist change or a member change, these guys are all longtime members and this is still a damn good band, but the last time they touched greatness was a decade ago with Under the Red Cloud. They need a shakeup, and if a producer change won’t do it, they might consider looking inwards at their own creative process and jolt their own sound with sharp turns towards pure aggression or even pure clean vocals (close to what Swallow the Sun did with Shining last year). Tomi’s harsh vocals just don’t hit as hard as they should across an entire album, and the back and forth growl/clean switching feels like its on autopilot at the moment. Maybe Esa takes over songwriting for the next one, pushing the band into a more riff centric direction and we scale back the keyboards (so much of the sameness comes from Santeri’s keyboard arrangements sounding very similar song to song). I’ve found myself going back to older albums whenever I want to hear this band, because their current sound has worn thin. What a drag to have to write negatively about this band’s new albums three times in a row now, but its where I’m at.

Pivoting to Battle Beast and their newest, Steelbound, which like its title suggests is a bit of a shift towards a more classic heavy metal approach away from the strong ABBA vibes of their previous album Circus of Doom. I dunno what the consensus was on that prior album, but I loved it because it pushed vocalist Noora Louhimo to the forefront of the songs and really made her incredible emotive range the centerpiece of its songwriting. On Steelbound, the songs that really work are not coincidentally the ones that stay faithful to this tried and true method, and on tunes where the band amps up the attack to force Louhimo to start belting like she’s Doro, the hooks seem less impactful, her vocal delivery less compelling. This is a good album, but this uneven refusal to commit to their strengths fully prevent it from reaching the lofty heights of Circus of Doom, nor even the Roxette steeped spunkiness of their 2019 album No More Hollywood Endings. Maybe the criticism of those albums from fans got the band thinking it was time to lean back to metal, but to me anyway, that’s not their strong suit, and that should be okay. You have a really compelling vocalist who flourishes on expressive melodies and soaring deliveries, let her cook and step out of the way with the riffage. Heavier is not always better, this is a built-in tendency of metal having so many flavors (subgenres), because what works for thrash metal or death metal doesn’t necessarily make a glam or power metal song better.

The other contender for biggest disappointment of the year is the new Sabaton album, Legends, which feels like a compilation album of b-sides that they’ve gathered up from various writing sessions and polished off to pack onto this aimless release. It’s a lackluster follow-up to their two World War I themed albums which really did feel fresh and inspired, particularly The Great War with its bleaker, darker tone reflected in the grinding, doomy approach of some of the songs. The follow-up The War to End All Wars was slightly less compelling, but contained the sterling single “Christmas Truce” which even the most curmudgeonly Sabaton critic should have been able to admit was a great song. But on Legends, it really does feel like some of these ideas have been recycled in a less obvious fashion, or that the band is taking the synth+vocal melody blueprint too far, as on the bumbling “Hordes of Khan”, in contention for the worst Sabaton song ever. Similarly “I, Emperor” is an aimless, paint-by-numbers dud that should be far greater given its subject matter (Napoleon Bonaparte), and I can’t imagine how pissed off Vlad the Impaler would be if he heard “Impaler”…such a tepid paean to one of history’s more horrifying figures. There’s bright spots here amidst the gloom, “Crossing the Rubicon” has a cracking chorus drop reminiscent of the best stuff off The Art of War, and “A Tiger Among Dragons” has an interestingly structured chorus, and “Maid of Steel” brings back that old Metalizer vibe that we’ve heard so little of in recent years. But damn does this album sound tired, and I expect better songwriting from Joakim Broden. This is a band that needs an inspiring concept to sound inspiring, and Legends wasn’t it.

August 29, 2025 2025, Black Metal, Helloween, Power Metal, reviews Post a Comment

Giants and Monsters For Real: New Helloween and Blackbraid

Arriving at the near end of a summer release season that was mostly predominated by new albums from lesser known and up and coming artists, two big names in the legendary Helloween and rising black metal force Blackbraid are back with highly anticipated releases. To say these two albums have preoccupied most of my listening time is an understatement, because with the exception of brief forays into what my circle of metal listening friends have been checking out, as well as the indulgent dips into old stuff (Megadeth for instance has been top of mind lately because of their recent bombshell news), these two albums have been pretty much all I’ve been listening to. They’re both pivotal releases for each of the bands involved for different reasons: First with Helloween, the power metal veterans are delivering their sophomore album Giants & Monsters with this post-reunion lineup that saw Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen return to the fold, and following up their wildly successful self-titled album from 2021 that saw them revitalize their sound and surpass many fans already high expectations (this one included). Really the main question looming over the release of this new album is if it can continue and perhaps expand on what this expanded band lineup has demonstrated they’re capable of.

For Blackbraid, this is the pivotal third album in their career, and though their last album was good, it did suffer from a tiny amount of the sophomore slump in that it didn’t sustain the excitement they generated on their debut back in 2022. It’s not always this way, but historically we’ve seen a lot of bands careers hinge on their third album as the one that cemented their status as vital artists or perhaps even stars in the making. Blackbraid has everything they need heading into this release, namely a unique take on a subgenre that is oversaturated with similar sounding bands, and the budding hype generated by their previous two albums that made waves in the metal community. If they can make the most of this moment like Unto Others did last year with Never, Neverland, and rise to another level with an incredible release, they more than any other black metal band on the landscape right now have the potential to be the next biggest thing.

Helloween – Giants & Monsters:

I’m hard pressed to think of a better recent example of why the choice of lead off single is such a pivotal decision in how fans anticipation for a new album might be altered or skewed far in advance of its release, often for the worse. Most of the people in power metal circles I’m privy to were scratching their heads over “This Is Tokyo” back when it was first premiered back in June, and I suspect its mostly because it wasn’t a showcase of the band’s three vocalists in a fireworks display such as “Skyfall” was back in advance of the self-titled album in 2021. This is a fairly proto-typical Andi Deris penned tune, largely in the vein of other Deris penned tracks which means its built around a massive hook, with a pop-rock tinge to its hard rockin’ attack. It’s a good song, a solid rocker, though nothing earth shattering, but it sits well in the context of the album — as an advance single however it led to some disgruntled fans. The choice of second single being the Sascha Gerstner penned “Universe (Gravity For Hearts)” would have been a far more wise choice as the lead single, not just for Kiske’s lead vocal presence, but for its racing, autobahn ready power metal tempo reflecting all the shiny qualities of vintage Helloween that typically get power metal fans salivating. The underlying sentiment here is that hopefully those fans who were quizzical or unhappy about “This Is Tokyo” have a long enough attention span to have checked out the second single and the album, but in 2025 that’s not a given.

Rarely do I just dive into the nitty gritty of an album straight away in a review as I did above, but what preamble about Helloween can I possibly give? I was lucky enough to get a chance to listen to this in advance of its release, and I’m going to enjoy sitting back and reading the discussion shortly after its out to see whether the general consensus lines up with mine — which is, that this is a genuinely excellent Helloween album, a vibrant continuation of what was ignited on the self-titled, albeit falling just short of meeting that album’s lofty heights. Truth be told, that’s about the most I was realistically hoping for, because had the band been able to top the last one, we’d be talking about a top three Helloween album in their career, which is where Helloween comfortably sits in my view. To say Giants & Monsters is jostling with other slightly less than legendary Helloween albums such as the excellent Master of the Rings and The Dark Ride is a fair assessment, I guess where it would fall in the rankings is largely mood dependent for me.

What cements its status among such stellar company are songs such as the album opener “Giants on the Run”, a Deris and Hansen vocal combo over a tremendous riff sequence that even features one of those classic Gamma Ray-ian mid-song bridges that shift the entire tempo and tone of things into folky balladry, before catapulting us back into the stratosphere on the backs of a glorious harmonized lead guitar solo. I vacillate on whether or not this is my favorite tune on the album alongside two others I’ll mention below, but this is the best possible intro track for this album by far. Kiske’s introduction arrives on “Savior Of The World” and its still surprising how fittingly the songs he’s singing lead vocals on seem to be tailor made for him, even though the band tends to write with the approach that anyone could sing lead on any given tune. I think that Kiske is at his best when given that long, long runway on verses to deliver that gradual soaring, effortless rise that sends a tune airborne, and this was no exception. The following Deris cut “A Little Is A Little Too Much” acts as a palette cleansing change of pace, a mid-tempo groove based banger that I have been obsessed over since I first heard it. There’s a tinge of dare I suggest, glam rock to the chorus here, a T-Rex meets Def Leppard vibe with the way Deris deftly delivers the wordplay in the chorus that I find really endearing. I love this song and it is serious competition for my favorite on the album despite its straightforward simplicity, though I concede others might find this too poppy (read: Deris-y).

Hansen gets in on the solo songwriting with “We Can Be Gods” and “Majestic”, and its interesting to hear just how easily he can blur the lines between the hard hitting Gamma Ray approach that characterized so many of their classic songs with the more tunefully melodic approach that best serves Kiske’s vocals as on the former. I particularly love the classic Gamma Ray-ian guitar solo in “We Can Be Gods” that kicks in at the 2:44 mark, a sound that is energizing and familiarly comforting all at once. The latter, “Majestic”, is a far more ambitious animal, a lengthy, spacious epic that sounds like a close cousin to Gamma Ray classics such as “Abyss of the Void” and “Rebellion In Dreamland”. Its placement as the finale of the album is well chosen because it does have an all encompassing, epic quality to its segmented passages that are thundering and dramatic. It feels like an album closer, particularly the final few minutes where things convalesce into a rapid metallic attack with serious riffs and a scorching lead solo overhead.

I’ll conclude with what I suspect will be the most overlooked cuts on the album, Gerstner’s solo penned “Hand of God”, maybe the catchiest moment on the entire album, another in an impressive list of songwriting credits for the “new” guy. It’s possible that Gerstner is one of the strongest songwriters going in the band right now, able to craft tunes that are built with Helloween DNA while achieving the tightrope feat of existing outside the power metal mold. It tends to work spectacularly well with Deris at the vocal helm, as is the case here, and you’ll remember that one of the best tunes from the last album, “Best Time” was a Gerstner/Deris composition. Weikath’s other composition is also an ultra catchy monster in “Under the Moonlight”, one of the most cheery Helloween songs we’ve heard in ages, but its stuffed so far back in the tracklist that you wonder if its going to get lost to people doing a casual sweep of the record. But best for last is the Deris penned “Into the Sun”, a beautiful, melancholy ballad that of course no Helloween album goes without according to Weikath. This is a stunning song, and one of the band’s best ever ballads, a perfect duet between Deris and Kiske that highlights both vocalists in a way that reminds me of their joining together on “Forever and One” on the tour two years ago. The synergy between these two singers really feels cemented here, and overall, this album exudes a feeling that this lineup is permanent, and hopefully we get a few more albums out of them.

Blackbraid – Blackbraid III:

I was looking around like a doofus for a black metal album to compare this to, when it hit me like a ton of bricks. What Blackbraid’s straightforwardly titled third album really reminds me of in all its epic, narrative driven, album-wide cinematic scope is something like Blind Guardian’s Nightfall in Middle Earth, or Kamelot’s Epica, with all those beautiful little interludes serving as connective tissue that links all the hard hitting, memorable songwriting together into one cohesive masterpiece. Yes, the new Blackbraid album is a veritable masterpiece, that word that tends to get casually thrown around all too often (you should see the press releases I get in my inbox) so I try to reserve its usage on this blog for when it really counts, and it really — really counts right now. This might be the most excited about a black metal album that I’ve been since Enslaved’s Axioma Ethica Odini way back in 2010 or Darkthrone’s The Underground Resistance in 2013… its been a long time either way dammit.

Everytime I listen to this album, which has been a frigging lot, I play it from start to finish, no skipping around, and that’s not just because its a no-skip album full of intense bangers. Its because this is one of those rare albums where the interstitial aspects of the album are integral to the listening experience as a whole. There are several pieces here, “Dusk (Eulogy)”, “The Earth Is Weeping”, “Traversing the Forest of Eternal Dusk”, and “Like Wind Through the Reeds Making Waves Like Water” which are instrumental in composition, yet varied enough in their makeup to stand apart from each other and arrive at intentional moments within the tracklisting. I normally excoriate bands for including intros in their albums, but “Dusk” is a mood setter that actually works, setting us in a headspace of a North American wilderness that matches the colors and tones of the album artwork. Similarly, “The Earth Is Weeping” is a canopy of strummed acoustic guitar figures and animal calls and the crackle of a fire burning that works incredibly well as a momentary pause between two of the album’s heaviest cuts. My favorite is the beautiful lead guitarwork that comes at the end of the flute laden “Traversing the Forest of Eternal Dusk” that mirrors the acoustic guitar melody. That crunchy, Dissection-y tone is awesome and I love its use in that spot.

But where Blackbraid really leaves its mark is of course within the metal itself, and these are the best songs that Sgah’gahsowáh has put together. The lead off single and first non-intro song “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of my Death” is song of the year list material, the kind of door breaking down ass kicker that reminds me of Immortal (clearly a big influence at work on this project as a whole). Immense riffs with propulsive power, Neil Schneider’s immaculately intricate percussion (he’s been on all the albums so far and his drumming has been phenomenal across the board), and Sgah’gahsowáh grim screaming like a possessed forest ghoul combine to supreme effect. I appreciate that there is an effort made to balance out the extreme elements with equal doses of melodicism, as on the lead melody that sits atop the anchor riff in “The Dying Breath of a Sacred Stag”, and indeed throughout this song, melody drips from nearly every twist and turn, even on the fading outro effect where we’re left with a lone acoustic melody (one of my favorite details on the album).

The a cappella black metal screamed vocal intro to “God of Black Blood” is one of those ideas that shouldn’t work on paper, and yet for its audacity it succeeds as a satisfying segue into its hypnotic riff sequence. The visceral intensity of the vocal performance on this song is impressive, and there’s an argument to be made that for all the focus on the folk instrumentation mixed throughout Blackbraid’s music that we’re not giving Sgah’gahsowáh enough credit for his vocal prowess. In a recent interview with New Noise Magazine, he said about the process of writing and editing new material, “When it comes to writing… I ask myself, ‘Does this make you want to bang your head fucking crazy hard?’ If the answer is no—if it doesn’t make you want to fucking punch a wall or some shit—I get rid of it. With a lot of songs, whenever I’m struggling during the writing, I say, if I was watching this live, would it make me fucking want to go crazy?“. That approach is what I hear on those aforementioned songs and on “Tears of the Dawn”, with nearly every aspect of the song devoted to sheer intensity and headbanging intentionality. Even on a nine minute epic such as “And He Became the Burning Stars…”, I appreciate that central focus on headbanging riffs and memorability that focus the sonic intensity into something you can move along to.

I’ve seen criticism come Blackbraid’s way, even with the new album, from a vocal few in the black metal world, particularly on Reddit where there’s a lot of mentioning the very similar Bathory riff heard in this record, and that much of the vocal approach is close to Immortal’s Abbath. I’m not too bothered about this, one because that riff sounds great within the context of the album, and two didn’t Blackbraid release a cover of “A Fine Day to Die” on the last album? Crafting your complaint about a band around a riff that bears striking similarity to one of their main influences seems silly. Black metal bands pilfer from their inspirations fairly often, and I don’t personally care about a minor instance of it to invalidate the entire work of an artist. And that his vocals alongside riff progressions sound vaguely Immortal-ish? Good! I love Immortal, it’s probably why I love Blackbraid too. I suspect most of the complaints from the black metal sect are based on angst at seeing this relatively new band get attention from unlikely places such as the New York Times and other mainstream outlets. Maybe it’s just about getting older, but when the music is this goddamned great I have zero ability to give a damn about stuff like that anymore. I’m excited about being this excited about a black metal album again, that’s all I care about.

March 27, 2025 2025, Avantasia, Edguy, Power Metal, Tobias Sammet Post a Comment

Caught Somewhere In Time: Avantasia’s Here Be Dragons

As a self appointed historian on the career of one Tobias Sammet, I can honestly say that the cumulative reaction to Avantasia’s tenth(!) studio album, Here Be Dragons, matches the divisiveness that was achieved by 2006’s The Scarecrow (aka the rebirth of the project from a studio only situation to an ongoing touring concern). Honestly, in some ways it surpasses the furor around that album if only because the bulk of the tumult around it’s release was largely negative towards the single “Lost In Space”, while the reaction towards the rest of The Scarecrow and it’s companion EPs was fairly enthusiastic, glowing even (the title track and cuts such as “Promised Land” and “The Story Ain’t Over” are rightfully considered classics today). Conversely, the discussion around the new album centers entirely upon the album as a whole, with wildly differing opinions, and an array of talking points both positive and negative. This has all been further inflamed not only by Sammet on social media defending lead single “Creepshow”, the most decidedly Edguy sounding song ever to grace an Avantasia tracklist — but by his retaliatory lyrics towards vocal fans of his older power metal style on “Return to the Opera”, a bonus track that is ironically enough being lauded by nearly everyone everywhere as the best song on the album. Oi vey, lets unpack all this.

First off, my thoughts on the album itself are confusing even for me, because on one hand, I really do love a lot of these songs, and yet, I find myself frustrated with their lack of explosiveness in the guitar department and in the overwhelming presence of layered keyboard orchestrations. Lets start with the title track, because despite being the second track on the album, it does admittedly feel like the first actual Avantasia tune on the album (we’ll talk about “Creepshow” in a bit) with a guest vocalist duetting alongside Sammet (Geoff Tate in this case). The chorus here is magnificent, one of the best on the album, arguably one of the strongest in the band’s discography as a whole, but I find myself only perking up when I feel it about to strike again. With the exception of a singular riff progression that serves as a far ahead of time prechorus, the rest of the verses are weighed down with a string of lone chords that fill in the space behind Tate or Sammet in uninspiring fashion. Things pick up in the bridge midway through, with a brisk tempo and a combining of voices on a uplifting melody, but at the 5:56 mark we’re deposited once again into this meandering nothingness. Its just so damn frustrating to not give this awesome chorus a long runway to soar off from… it reminds me of the atmospheric nonsense that sat in the middle of “The Scarecrow” when there should’ve been a ripping, Europower guitar solo in it’s place. Despite it’s faults however, “Here Be Dragons” is quintessential Avantasia, a song I keep coming back to for its regality and dramatic pomp and splendor.

While the aforementioned title track might claim the album’s best chorus, the best guest vocalist pairing surprisingly winds up being Tommy Karevik on “The Witch”. Its not even that Sammet wrote a very Kamelot-ian or Seventh Wonder-ish tune here like he did for Roy Khan back in the day on “Twisted Mind”, its more that Karevik is a bit of a chameleon as a singer, finding a way to fit into any style or song structure and maximize his moment. Honestly, he probably doesn’t get enough credit for this, because I can’t recall ever hearing a bad guest spot from him ever (even on some of the Ayreon stuff where I didn’t particularly enjoy the songwriting). This is a crisp, confident, and incredibly addictive tune wisely chosen as a single that echoes shades of “Dying For An Angel”, and it was a shrewd decision to allow Karevik to handle the first verse on his own, thereby giving the song a very different feel from the rest of the album where Sammet is usually taking the lead on things. Similarly on “Bring on the Night”, ole’ Bob Catley kicks off this power ballad (what else with Catley?) with an immediate vocal melody lead-in on the intro, and while there’s a deliberately overproduced 80’s version of this tune as a bonus track, this original version has washes of mid-80s Magnum in spades, which is rather fitting in a way given that band’s ultimate curtain call earlier last year. Its one of the better Catley centric songs Tobias has penned, easily my favorite since the 2016 Song of the Year “Restless Heart and Obsidian Skies” off Ghostlights

Slightly less in my esteem but certainly strong songs in their own right are “The Moorlands at Twilight” with Michael Kiske (Ernie for you old school fans) making his triumphant return to the project, as well as “Phantasmagoria” with the warrior himself Ronnie Atkins. I enjoy both songs a great deal, particularly the latter where Atkins’ rough, jagged vocals are right in their element on a song that sits in that Hellfire Club-ish power metal meets hard rock pocket. Kiske’s song is a companion piece to “Wastelands” off The Wicked Symphony, with some uptempo Euro-power at work, except this time spliced in with some latter day Avantasia eccentricities to prevent it from being straight ahead power metal. And finally Adrienne Cowan gets a turn on an album after doing some stints as Avantasia’s backing vocalist on tour, and she sounds fantastic on “Avalon”, which thankfully deviates from Sammet’s propensity to relegate women guest vocalists in the past to power ballads. Cowan gets to utilize her throaty belting voice here, the kind she wielded so effortlessly on spectacular Seven Spires tunes such as “Succumb” and “In Sickness, In Health” (maybe Sammet got inspired after duetting with her on “Reach Out For the Light” in place of Kiske on tour). I think that “Against the Wind” is a decent song in it’s entirety (though H.E.A.T.’s Kenny Leckremo is lost as a guest vocal here), but it has the honor of having one of the best moments on the album, with Sammet addressing his critics for the first time on an Avantasia album directly, “If you don’t like what I do / then it’s not made for you”. Finally the Freddy Mercury/Queen tinged “Everybody’s Here Until the End” is a fine album closer, a semi power ballad with a deft chorus, although relegating Roy Khan to a mere spoken/sung passage in the middle seems like a waste of talent.

That leaves us album opener “Creepshow” and the decidedly metallic “Unleash the Kraken” as the final songs here to discuss, and they’re of particular interest in the sense that there are no guest vocalists on both tracks, just Sammet himself. So lets talk about the latter first, because I actually think its an awesome tune and reminds me a ton of something like “Under the Moon” from Hellfire Club, or given the balls to the wall nature of the chorus, “Nailed to the Wheel” from Mandrake, both songs from Edguy albums by the way if you didn’t catch that. I genuinely feel in listening to this tune that it could have fit into the tracklist of either of those albums, and that’s ironic given Sammet’s own insistence on not returning to his power metal roots. Then there’s the flashpoint song in all discussions about this album, “Creepshow”, which sounds like it could have been an Edguy b-side from the Space Police era. It is easily the most middling of all the songs on an otherwise strong Avantasia album. Repetitive, simplistic, and intended as such according to Sammet in its aim, as he explained: “It’s short and catchy, and it emphasizes a facet of my work that has taken a backseat in my music in recent years. It’s light-hearted and the opposite of melancholic. And it’s fresh, boisterous and unabashed – a straightforward kick-ass anthem.” He even admits to it sounding like something from the past, stating “…even though it may seem like a reminiscence of my earlier writing, I think we managed to turn the whole thing into a trademark Avantasia tune…“. Hmmm, I’m not sure how it sounds characteristically like Avantasia, given the lack of other voices — after all, even “Lost in Space” for all its simplified pop-rock sonics had Amanda Somerville adding her vocals into the mix.

So I get where fans are a little confused by this album and Sammet’s mixed messaging both from his running social media soapbox on Facebook and Instagram where he is often vocal about his chosen musical path and sticking to his guns (and real talk, I respect him for his stance at least, though I question his need to declare it all the time), and also from within the context of the album itself. Its not just those two songs sounding like old Edguy that are prompting this confusion either, its the reality that the intentional Metal Opera era throwback bonus track “Return to the Opera” is being declared by many fans as the album’s best song. I disagree… only slightly however, because this is a banger of an old school power metal cut, built on the same DNA that informed all those classic late 90s/early 2000s Edguy and Avantasia records that we all look back so fondly upon. The lyrics of this song are self-explanatory, a mea culpa to fans clamoring for the past and also a plea for them to shut up finally… and I’d be on Sammet’s side 100% if he weren’t so goddamned great at writing stuff like this. Seriously, I have replayed this bonus track over and over again just for the sheer joy it brings me, even though I realize its a bit a joke track. He has said in interviews recently (and even alludes to this within the lyrics of the song) that he enjoyed writing it, but if he had to write an entire album’s worth of songs just like it, it would be disheartening (or drive him to alcoholism given the “Betty Ford” references in the lyrics). I get that sentiment, but I’ll argue that the success in the ears of fans of “Return to the Opera” might work against his intentions in releasing it in the first place.

Thinking it all over, I find myself simultaneously thrilled by this album and frustrated with it. I love most of these songs for their melodies and some truly awesome guest vocal moments (Karevik is the MVP in this category), yet I wish it didn’t sound so pillowy soft in it’s production, and I wish some guests were utilized better such as Roy Khan. I think the heavily layered keyboards that adorn so much of this album end up stifling certain tunes that need a bit more space to breath and let the guitars or singular piano melodies rip (“Everybody’s Here Until the End” needs a bit more Meatloaf/Steinman sharpness and vigor for a start). I think the pendulum has swung too far into the direction of prog at times production wise, and there needs to be a little more Gamma Ray and a touch less Magnum in the overall approach during the mixing phase. And I’ll admit that Sammet’s dip back into older, both Metal Opera-ian and Edguy-ish styles on respective tracks has made me a little nostalgic. I long for more stuff like “Unleash the Kraken”, and really what that means is that I long for Edguy, something that’s not drenched in symphonics or theatrical drama like the past few Avantasia albums. It was a breath of fresh air, and I think many fans of both bands found themselves gratefully gulping it in and eagerly looking around for the next one. That its so brief is frustrating to some and bewildering to many. What exactly is Avantasia supposed to be… a Tobias Sammet solo vehicle, or a group project with a rotating cast of singers? He did well bringing in fresh voices to the mix this time in a substantive way, but maybe now its time to fully reimagine the sound of modern Avantasia into something else instead of repeating the formula of the past few albums.

March 5, 2025 2025, Blog related, reviews Post a Comment

Restless and Wild: 2025’s First Quarter Blitz

I have to admit to being slightly taken aback by just how strong the start to this year has been metal-wise. This is because normally, release calendars get off to a slow, lurching start in the first few wintry months of any year, and only really get frenetic around the springtime, which allows us lazier listeners to dilly dally for awhile in the wake of the post year-end best-of list publishing where we listen to a ton of old stuff or nothing at all. I consider myself lucky in that knowing a bunch of friends who are even more intense about their metal listening than I am yields a handful of best of lists worth delving into, which I’ve been doing diligently through most of these first few weeks. And to that point, normally the first article of the year is a mea culpa talking about all the stuff I’ve missed the year prior, but you know what — I can’t afford to that do this time around because there is so much genuinely exciting new stuff coming out that I owe it to myself to sort out my thoughts on all of it here. So here are some scattered thoughts on a plethora of new things and other odds and ends that have been top of mind recently:

Saor – Amidst the Ruins:

Having lapsed on release date awareness recently, I was happily surprised that Andy Marshall was rewarding my late December and early January constant spins of Forgotten Paths and Origins with a new Saor album. Going into this I had only expectations for the quality of the compositions, because there’s a standard that Marshall had set over the entire discography of the project that was largely characterized by thoughtfulness, depth, and a conveying of emotion. That latter dimension has been one that shifts, because I’d imagine that no one could argue against the idea that Origins (a year end listee in 2022) was strikingly more euphoric in tone than its immediate predecessor. Now while opinions are mixed about that change in tone, I personally loved it and wouldn’t have minded if he continued that trajectory. But credit to Marshall, he pivoted away from it a touch on Amidst the Ruins, which is indeed a darker, more earthen toned album in the vein of Forgotten Paths, though with the added spice of some smoky mysticism, as heard in the striking single “The Sylvan Embrace”. But not entirely, because on “Rebirth”, we get some of those clear eyed lead guitars combined with ringing bagpipes and it gives major Origins vibes. In re-listening to the album just now, I feel the takeaway here is that it’s a combination of moods from the past few records, a sort of career summary in a way, and that’s not a bad thing. I do love it, and though it lacks a transcendent moment such in the extended guitar solo of “Aurora”, its likely to stick in the listening rotation throughout the year.

The Halo Effect – March of the Unheard:

I feel like the general consensus about The Halo Effect’s first album has over the past three years gradually caught up to the opinion that I had of it upon its release, that it sounded far too much like Dark Tranquility for its own good. Sure there were elements of Jesper Stromblad’s signature touch on guitars and the songwriting was at times pretty solid, but Mikael Stanne’s position at the vocal helm was that double edged sword of him being a really fantastic screamer with incredible tone, and yet someone who has had years of developing a clean vocal melody style that is unmistakably recognizable. So recognizable in fact that it was hard to shake the Dark Tranquility vibes leaching into The Halo Effect’s music, particularly when it was largely a mix of scream/clean balancing acts within the songs, a trait that characterized so many of the recent albums of his main band. So on the sequel, they seem to have either heard the criticism and are consciously responding to it, or Jesper has seemingly decided to interject more of his signature guitarwork approach to the band’s sound, because there is a convincing aspect to March of the Unheard that is classic Gothenburg melodeath in terms of pure sound. For that reason alone, I enjoy this album a great deal when I’m actively listening to it, because its hitting those same taste buds that were awakened when I first heard classic In Flames and the rest of the Gothenburg ilk. But I will offer this criticism, that after weeks of listening to this consistently, I still have a hard time identifying most of these songs individually, as they all blur together in this modern melodeath mélange, and that’s been my criticism of Dark Tranquility’s newer albums as well. And I hate piling on Mr. Stanne, because I think he’s a great vocalist, but perhaps he needs guiderails for this project, such as a declarative rule on no clean singing, or no vocal melody driven choruses allowed? A little more Majesties’ Vast Reaches Unclaimed and less Atoma or Endtime Signals would really go a long way.

Majestica – Powertrain:

A fun one from a band led by one Tommy Johansson (ex-Sabaton/ReinXeed) who is in his power metal element here. I have a fond regard for anyone proudly flying the flag of classic power metal (the non-meme sort that is), and Tommy loudly declares that pride on an album that is a natural progression from their 2019 debut Above the Sky and sophomore x-mas concept album A Christmas Carol (if we’re counting that as a regular album I suppose). It also doubles as a tribute to power metal in subtle and not so subtle ways, the latter coming in the form of a unabashed salute to fellow Swedes in Hammerfall on “Megatrue”, with lyrics invoking that band’s album and song titles to amusing effect (well, to us power metal nerds), set to a suitably Hammerfall-ian marching song structure. I hear a little nod towards “Full Moon” ala Sonata Arctica on “No Pain, No Gain”, not only in the keyboards, but in the vocal patterning that does have hints of Tony Kakko. I hear Power Quest on “Victorius” with splashes of Stratovarius, and major Heavenly vibes on “Go Higher” — but alas, I trust that the band didn’t want us to only take away comparisons from this album. On “A Story In the Night”, they unleash a beast of a song that is unmistakably cut from the ReinXeed/Majestica songwriting mold, easily their finest tune to date and one to likely land on the songs of the year candidate list at least. Along with fellow Swede Johannes Skyblazer, Tommy has become one of the leading lights in a resurgence of unabashedly Europower oriented power metal, unafraid of being unfashionable and gimmick free. Its refreshing.

Dawn of Solace – Affliction Vortex:

Really impressed with the new Dawn of Solace, this being Tuomas Saukkonen’s other other band (that second ‘other’ is referring to Before the Dawn, who he brought back from the dead last year with a new singer onboard, that dude from The Voice of Finland reality show), and if that name is still not ringing a clear bell in your head, he’s the main man behind Wolfheart. So with this other band of his, it leans towards less aggression, and more of a focus on Finland’s ongoing love affair with melodic doom through a gothic filter. A two man lineup, Saukkonen’s always excellent harshes are paired against Mikko Heikkilä’s clean vocals, who is a bit of an acquired taste admittedly. He reminds me a lot of Tuomas Tuominen who gothic metal fans might remember as the vocalist on the first two The Man-Eating Tree albums and all those Fall of the Leafe records, sharing a similar tone and cadence in their deliveries. This is a moody, patience requiring affair, with songs that aren’t shy about gradual builds, slower tempos (that doom influence), and payoffs that aren’t hook based. It is a demanding listening experience in that regard, but I keep coming back to it for the depth and raw emotion they’ve mined here. I think if you’re a die-hard aggressive Wolfheart fan, this might be a fifty-fifty proposition, but if you like Finnish gothic metal this might be close enough to pique your interest.

The Night Flight Orchestra – Give Us The Moon:

I should also mention the new album from The Night Flight Orchestra, Give Us The Moon, which continues their locked into 1985 stylistic direction that they’d been splashing around in for the past two albums. I will say this, on one hand, there are some really solid songs here, “Like the Beating Of A Heart” is the band’s best single in ages and “Paloma” is a rather creative take on power balladry (deep pulls from Foreigner’s brand of AOR here) — but on the other hand, I feel like the band is treading familiar ground here that was already covered ad nauseum on the two Aeromantic albums that preceded this. There was a point where it seemed like the band was progressing their sound according to the timeline of the 80s, starting off with their debut album reflecting 1980 or 81, and each successive album moving along with the stylistic shifts in sound that actually occurred in that decade. Now I’m not so sure, maybe they just like this particular mid-80s aesthetic so much they’ve decided to nest here, but I do feel like their sound needs a shakeup. My vote would be to inject some late 80s glam/pop metal vibrancy into the mix on the next album, a little Whitesnake or Europe-ian over the top dramatic flair and some more virtuosic guitarwork. I can only hope anyway.

There were a handful of other releases that I’ll briefly comment on, starting with Master Sword’s Toying With Time being a really stellar listen, and if you heard the recent episode of the MSRcast, you’ll have heard us realizing during recording that it was the band’s final album, as they broke up immediately after its release, which does dampen the mood a bit. Give it a shot though because its a really unique blend of styles, a raspy, deep toned talented vocalist in Lily Hoy, and The Legend of Zelda as lyrical inspiration (a cousin to Fierce Deity in some ways). Italy’s Labyrinth also returned with their first album in four years, In the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye, and it’s a solid effort that I enjoyed to a certain extent. I will concede that it didn’t have quite the punch of 2021’s Welcome to the Absurd Circus where they leaned more towards classic melodic power metal. Here I get more a progressive vibe, big on dense riff sequences and less on the soaring melodies leading the way, although Roberto Tiranti does go wild on a couple songs. I guess I’m still on the fence about my overall feelings on this album, and it very well might be a grower that hopefully sticks with me through the year.

Elsewhere, there was obviously the new Dream Theater album Parasomnia with Portnoy back in the fold, and while it was alright, I did find that “Bend the Clock” was the most interesting thing they’ve done in ages, a song genuinely brimming with some emotion and a above average vocal from James Labrie. I love the first minute and a half of that song where its such a Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree vibe that’s happening, with undertones of nostalgia and melancholy… ahhh, if only more of their stuff could be like this I’d be a fan of this band. I listened out of curiosity and didn’t regret it, but probably will only return to that song alone. And the new Dynazty album Game of Faces came out and damn if I can find anything remarkable about it, which makes me sad actually. I don’t know if its just a me problem or that the band has started to repeat themselves, but this all sounds like stuff I’ve heard before, just less catchy. I like Nils Molin quite a bit as a vocalist for this band (unlike in Amaranthe, my criticism of him there should be well documented by now) so this is a total drag for me, so to curb my sadness I’ll end my comments here.

I can’t say that I enjoyed much of Marko Hietala’s solo album Roses From the Deep, but I applaud him getting back out there after dabbling around the metal scene with some solo guest appearances (including a cracking one with Therion on the first Leviathan album in 2021). This has much more in common with Tarot than Nightwish of course, but its so all over the place stylistically that it fell victim to a classic solo album faux pas of not having a cohesive vision. It was more Balls to Picasso and less The Chemical Wedding so to speak. There’s a new Lacuna Coil album out called Sleepless Empire, and I think its solid for what it is, though its back to their more slick, polished direction as opposed to the surprisingly dark and heavy affair that made 2019’s Black Anima very compelling. Cristina Scabbia still sounds ageless to her credit, and they have a sound that works for them, and there are songs on here such as “In Nomine Patris” and “Never Dawn” that are incredibly strong despite the thick production gloss. I do think getting messier and darker with their sound is the way for them to lean, but maybe that’s not an opinion shared by their fans.

I’m still digging into the new Ebonheart, Arion, Kilmara (love that track Daniel Heiman guests on), and Prehistoria albums, as well as Udo’s guest loaded Balls To The Wall – Reloaded, and new The Ferrymen album. I’ll probably leave those to the podcast to talk about because they’ll be old news by the time I’m caught up. Lastly, I’ll mention that I caught my first show of the year this past Sunday at the small room of House of Blues Houston, for Swallow the Sun with Harakiri For the Sky and Ghost Bath and a darkwave opener called Snakes of Russia. Regarding the latter, with all due respect to the singular gentleman who is that artist, darkwave as a live experience is profoundly boring if you don’t have some kind of visual aid to accompany it. At a certain point, I looked around and noticed people staring at their phones or like myself, the floor. His music was fine, it all kinda sounded the same, but would be great background music for working on something, but someone needs to whisper to him about reconsidering it as a live proposition. Ghost Bath were alright, apparently I forgot everything about seeing them in a gig long past, but what struck me this time was their proclamation that they play “rock n’ roll about killing yourself”, and then proceeded to do a black metal era Tribulation imitation for their set. A friend asked after the show, “Are they ashamed of black metal?”. And that was a legit question that hung in the air.

Seeing Harakiri For the Sky was a longtime coming after becoming a fan of the band back in 2018 with Arson, and they did play “Fire, Walk With Me” from that album, but mostly focused on the new one which I’m not as into. The drummer was phenomenal, and of course Matthias Sollak was incredible on lead guitar, and while they aren’t the most engaging live band, they managed to translate what is an incredibly dense, layered sound into the live setting rather well. As for Swallow the Sun, this was maybe my seventh or eighth time seeing them live now, and it was just as excellent as any of them have been (2019 was special for seeing Juha Ravio for the first time since his live hiatus). Hearing the new songs from Shining that I was obsessed with last year was a joy to behold, and they sounded heavier and more bruising than on the record (for anyone who had issues with their production). Also attending the show were Seven Spires’ Adrienne Cowan and Jack Kosto, and I got to talk to both of them outside briefly before Swallow the Sun went on. Jack was in town working on new music with Adrienne, and she told me she was leaving for the Avantasia tour the next day. I’d met both of them before, in fact Adrienne has become a common sight at specific Houston metal gigs over the past few years, but it was still surreal to look to my left during the Swallow the Sun set and see both of them standing next to us, nodding their heads along.

And that catches us up on current metal releases and events, for the most part. Anything that’s not covered in this update will be discussed on the podcast. Hopefully we get a bit of a slowdown in noteworthy releases so I can focus on some other things worth talking about on the blog, but if not, I’ll be back with one of these catch up type updates again. I’m going to deliver a singularly focused discussion on the new Avantasia and Brainstorm albums next, because both of those are worthy of a deeper look just by virtue of their veteran standing and my unabashed love for both of them. I have many thoughts!

November 13, 2024 2024, Nightwish, symphonic metal, Tuomas Holopainen Post a Comment

Deja Vu: Nightwish’s Yesterwynde

Although I’ve largely avoided writing reviews this year, it was difficult to keep quiet about a new Nightwish album, because obviously they are a seminal band in symphonic metal, but also because they at one point delivered a legitimate album of the year in 2011 for Imaginaerum (in my revisionist, corrected list that is). Yet as opposed to just immediately writing an album review for Yesterwynde like everyone else, I wanted to let this thing digest for a bit internally, and for the dust to settle around it’s release as well. I’ve read scattered opinions on this album, the band’s first without bassist/co-vocalist Marco Hietala since 2001’s Wishmaster (which sounds unreal but yeah, its true), and have felt that a consensus has begun to emerge that largely centers on indifference from most. Yes the Nightwish faithful are still attenuated to Tuomas Holopainen’s lyrics here in a way that few other metal bands experience, but I was admittedly a little bit surprised at just how quickly this new album was listened to, commented on, and dismissed by the symphonic and power metal communities at large.

For all the criticism 2020’s Human. :||: Nature. received, it was the subject of furious discussion for weeks on end when it was released — granted we were all of us sitting at home because of the pandemic and had nothing but time on our hands, but I remember there being real agitation and annoyance at that album’s indulgences, at its underuse of Floor Jansen’s talent, its marginalization of Marco Hietala’s vocals, and its opulent instrumental second disc that gave new meaning to the term pretentious. But in the now month and a half that’s passed since Yesterwynde’s release, I’ve not seen the same amount of discussion about it anywhere really. The posts on various metal subreddits about the album aren’t tracking in the hundreds of comments a Nightwish album usually garners, the album got a cursory discussion in the r/PowerMetal discord, and I don’t recall anyone on Facebook or Twitter or Threads discussing it at length. I’ve come to sense that maybe, and this is just my admittedly singular perspective… most of the people out there that would have had an interest in Nightwish’s work previously have little to say this time around. So why the general indifference? Why not the tidal back and forth of opinions between those who find Nightwish can’t do much wrong versus those who think Tuomas has his head up you know where?

So I think the obvious culprit would be the music itself, which I will say off the bat is certainly an improvement over Human. :||: Nature (I really resent the punctuation in that album’s title). Wisely selected singles such as “Perfume of the Timeless” and “An Ocean of Strange Islands” are indeed made of the same ingredients that formulated so much vintage Nightwish of yore, though criticisms against their mixing are hugely warranted. Floor’s vocals were intentionally mixed lower on this album as an artistic decision, for what purpose I’m not entirely sure however. If you go on YouTube and search up “Perfume of the Timeless” remixed, a fan has uploaded a version where he boosted her vocals and lo and behold, it sounds dramatically more powerful than the album version, entirely more thrilling and Nightwish-y, but I digress. The other single, “The Day Of…” is less convincing however, and the more I’ve listened to it’s clunky mess of children’s choirs (a musical element Tuomas has overused by this point) and orchestral passages where the band practically disappears, the more I’m convinced this might be the second worst Nightwish single to date. If you’re wondering, “Noise” is easily the first in that ranking… they should do everything in their power to not promote something that dastardly again.

Stepping away from the singles, I actually found that I enjoyed part of “Sway” and much of the orchestral ballad “Lanternlight”, with the former being a close cousin to the twee Rusted Root vibes of “Harvest” on the previous album. I love the first few minute and a half of “Sway” in particular, with it being one of the few examples where I really feel that Troy had to have a lead vocal part, his gentle tone a perfect match for the hushed whisper the vocal melody is delivered in. It all gets a little messy during the middle sequence where they’re talking in grandiose tones about “the big reveal”… can we get back to the ballad please? Well they never do and the song dissolves into orchestral nothingness and four minutes feels like six and this is an opportunity wasted. On “Lanternlight”, I felt we got the closest to the Nightwish of olde, with Tuomas penning a heart on sleeve, lead vocal driven ballad that Floor genuinely shines on as a singer, her best moment on these past two albums. I think it works because it is so simple, the melody is allowed to flow unobstructed by any other elements jutting in unwelcomingly. As for everything else… well, “The Children of ‘Ata” had a solid chorus, an admirable lyrical sentiment that covered an interesting historical tidbit I had remembered reading about before, but that was it for positive takeaways.

I wrote in my review for Human. :||: Nature that Tuomas was “at his best when he allows himself to write in a pop songwriter mode first and foremost, and then colors in the details with metallic elements, with film soundtrack music, and with ancillary elements like the aforementioned tribal drumming or folk music”. All the progressive rock infusions that have swirled into the mix on these last two albums are pulling him away from his strength, and I think that no one is around to tell him as much (he certainly won’t discern this himself… this is what happens when others start calling you maestro and you don’t correct them). The first Floor album, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, worked really well because he essentially wrote simple, straightforward symphonic metal songs that were built on hooks and free flowing melodies. I remember remarking that it sounded at times like a throwback to Oceanborn, with a slight power metal tinge to it, and the lyrical theme of that album was the first dip into this pool of humanism and nature. It really worked. The thing that I ultimately came away with while listening to Yesterwynde was that Endless Forms aged really well, its directness very reminiscent of the sharpness of the band that wrote Imaginaerum, and that everything since has been a chore to sit and listen thru. I do think Marco’s missing vocal presence could have gone a long way in addressing that, the idea being that his voice almost demanded something more straightforwardly metal or more meat and potatoes so to speak, and with just Floor and Troy on vocals, there is a lack of this needed driving force.

I also wonder if the overwhelming indifference I’ve detected to this albums release is also a reaction to this being the third record in a row mining this particular subject matter. I know I’ve used the Green Day analogy before, that American Idiot was a fresh concept when it came out, but that same concept felt trite and overdone when they went with it again five years later on 21st Century Breakdown. Nightwish has described this as being the third and final album in a trilogy, so the good news here is that this particular vein should be exhausted by their own admission, that we can expect something new. In the process of preparing to write about this album, I listened to the previous albums in this trilogy back to back before listening to this one, and despite the quality gap between those two albums, the thing they share in common with Yesterwynde is that some of these songs are interchangeable from album to album. Something like “Sway” or “Harvest” could’ve been on any of these three albums, same for some of the other tracks, and so it calls into question the need for a trilogy — all are “positive” in tone, which has been the key talking point in the press interviews the band has given this time around. What was so different from album to album here that necessitated three albums worth of music digging into the same of inspiration that wasn’t already said on Endless Forms?

That lingering question is ultimately what Nightwish fans should be worried about. Did Tuomas extend this theme for so long because he’s at a loss of what to do otherwise? And now that its over, where does he go from here as a songwriter for this band? The standard advice he’d likely get from most critics is to return to something more personal and cut from the same cloth the older Nightwish classics were, but is that possible? Those albums were written from starkly personal places that fans love to speculate about (I will refrain here), and he’s older and at a different phase in his life. We’ve also seen less than stellar results when some other artists have attempted such a challenge, with the results being watered down or unconvincing. Its ironic that the older, more personal songs about longing and heartbreak and inner turmoil were more universally loved and adored than these songs addressing more universal, grander themes that should be applicable to all of us. But that’s an adage that has been around in all types of media, that audiences will respond to something they can identify with. Its why people love to talk about their favorite characters in movies, and not so much their favorite thematic material. I don’t have any answers for this lingering question, but I’ll be extremely interested in how Tuomas answers it.

July 5, 2024 2024, symphonic metal, Therion 2 Comments

Celebrating a Masterpiece: Therion’s Sirius B / Lemuria Turns Twenty

This past May 24th, a quiet 20th anniversary passed for Therion’s twin 2004 albums Sirius B and Lemuria, with only the band themselves acknowledging the event via one of bandleader Christofer Johnsson’s retrospective Facebook posts he’s been fond of writing lately. It is predominantly the view of the metal community at large that Theli is the band’s widely accepted masterpiece, and rightfully so, that album being a genre defining landmark of symphonic metal and still one of the most vital metal albums of the 90s. Yet within the communities of Therion fans I’ve dabbled with, there is an almost pervasive belief that the band struck upon a pair of unheralded masterpieces with these twin albums. I have long held this belief myself, actually since first getting my hands on a pre-ordered double disc edition from Nuclear Blast all those many years ago. It was the first new Therion release I was anticipating, having only became a fan of the band shortly after the release of Secret of the Runes back in 2001, and to say that it lived up to the hype is an extreme understatement. I knew from press tidbits ahead of the release date that the scale of production on these two albums was massive, 170 musicians involved, including The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and an arsenal of folk instruments, most alien to the traditional format of heavy metal. But there’s a huge gulf between press release ambitions and the actual artistic execution thereof, and I wasn’t prepared for just how magnificent the latter could truly be.

The presence of a large orchestra was indeed a new thing for Therion, having only utilized small orchestras or ensembles on their prior four symphonic metal albums. If the goal in utilizing the Prague Philharmonic was to sound massive, Therion succeeded in spades, with the orchestra adding a lushness, depth and textural grandeur to the albums that they had never achieved before. Rounding out the symphonic sound were the expected hosts of professional classical vocalists and choirs, a Therion staple since Theli, but the band also chose to reintroduce the concept of actual lead vocalists once again. The most notable of whom was Christofer Johnsson himself, delivering lead vocals for the first time since his fierce barking on Theli, but really hearkening back to his guttural death growls on Symphony Masses. Also returning for guest appearances on select tracks was Piotr Wawrzeniuk, former Therion drummer and vocalist whose distinctive clean vocals graced those iconic Theli songs. But a fresh face entered the Therion world around this time in former Yngwie Malmsteen and then current At Vance vocalist Mats Levén. To say Levén would become an integral part of the Therion sound and line-up is an understatement, he became their touring vocalist for the supporting tour, and was a key component to the excellent follow up Gothic Kabbalah where he in many ways became the face of the band alongside fellow lead vocalists Snowy Shaw and Katarina Lilja. The vocal variety on these two albums are part of their success, creating a diverse listening experience that was fresh and unpredictable, a break from the past few albums relying mostly on lead choral vocals alone.

I underestimated just how difficult it would be to put into words why I believe these albums are genuine, Theli-level masterpieces and capstones of the symphonic metal genre. I could tell you that they sound epic… but that adjective gets thrown around so much by all of us in regards to metal, particularly of this vein, that it’s almost lost all meaning in the grand scheme of things. When I was listening to the albums repeatedly over these past few weeks, I tried to recall my memories of what it felt like when I first listened to them twenty years ago. One of those memories that tended to be top of mind was that I’d sit and listen to them on headphones while staring at their breathtaking cover artwork, courtesy of the great Thomas Ewerhard. The music on the albums sounded like it was telling the story of these bleak yet beautiful mythical landscapes depicted on both covers, or in some fantastical way, was recorded music that was obtained from those places. The flood plain stretching before skeletons of skyscrapers on the Lemuria artwork always struck me as evoking a sense of mystery, loss, and sorrow — while the hot, scorched earth desert plateaus of the Sirius B artwork brought to mind a feeling of eternity, elegiac and wondrous at once. That gigantic planet framing the bleak, blood red sky in the horizon with a menacing, eye of Sauron type of image in the center only added to the sense of the mystical and forbidden.

The music on both albums matched the imagination of their artwork, pushing aside any notions of aiming to be hooky and catchy (although those qualities exist in subtler, untraditional ways) and instead pulsing with an emotional ripple of the heady rush of indefinable spirituality. These tracks felt more like movements in a grander, overarching piece of music as opposed to just being regular songs, at times reminiscent of the pacing of a film score. One of the admittedly stranger references I keep coming back to is that sometimes the music here reminds me of the way the German group Enigma’s music was put together, with an ear towards unconventional structures and disparate elements that somehow gelled beautifully. Therion had been working with unique song structures for awhile by this point, with plenty of fine examples on their prior four albums. Yet here they seemed to let their artistic ambitions run free, veering wildly from one sequence to something else entirely, such as the way “Dark Venus Persephone” opts for an orchestral swell during the mid-song bridge instead of a traditional guitar solo, horns and woodwinds combining for a transcendent moment. Or the opening minute of “The Khlysti Evangelist”, where vinyl pops and crackles accompany what appears to be a lost recording of an opera, lulling us into a false sense of security before a battery of snare drums and Accept-ian riffage shakes us out of our reverie. The entirety of “An Arrow From the Sun” is a lucid example of this overarching tendency, from beautiful lead guitar figures erupting out of nowhere during the refrain to usher in a heavenly blanket of choirs, to a group of mandolins gracefully floating in towards the end without warning.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Therion is their tendency to utilize purely instrumental musical motifs as the “chorus” or refrain in lieu of the standard way of building one out of a vocal melody. It always made them feel more organically symphonic than any other artists tagged as symphonic metal, and lent their music an original identity that separated them from their peers. That tendency is on hyperdrive throughout both Sirius B and Lemuria, but a wonderful example of the band taking a more traditional vocal melody forward approach is on the title track “Lemuria”, a gorgeous, acoustic guitar meets swelling strings lament. Here Wawrzeniuk shines on lead vocals, delivering perhaps his most iconic moment during his time with Therion, his distinctly accented singing voice taking command during the chorus, sounding strangely alien in this lush context, yet somehow fitting perfectly. The lead guitar that echoes his vocal melody is pitch perfect in tone, and a vivid example of just how fluid Kristian Niemann is as a lead player, his work throughout these albums is jaw dropping. He contributed to songwriting on “Feuer Overtüre / Prometheus entfesselt”, and I love how he and Johnsson live for these unpredictable and exciting placements of lead guitar explosions, defying convention and listener expectations (you can normally tell when a solo is coming in standard metal tunes, not the case at all here). When I hear his signature tones on the fantastic Sorcerer albums he’s been on since leaving Therion, I’m reminded of all these incredible moments he laid down with Therion on albums such as these (he’s seriously one of my favorite guitarists of all time).

I mentioned a sense of the spiritual earlier, and I get those feelings when I listen to tracks such as the cinematic “Call of Dagon”, with its call-and-response horns and woodwinds musical figure that serves as the wordless refrain over rumbling bass and dirty riffing. I feel it during “Three Ships of Berik, Pt 1/ Pt 2”, a truly grandiose, perfect fusion of orchestra and metal where Johnsson’s death growls are contrasted by joyfully power metal-ian lead guitar figures and a regal, triumphant orchestral counterpoint. The glorious, dramatic, sturm und drang ending is so unexpected and spirit lifting that it still catches me off guard all these thousands of listens later. I would be remiss not to mention “The Wondrous World of Punt” in this context, because its perhaps my favorite moment on both albums, a piece of music that explored territory that recalled prior classics such as “Eternal Return” and “Clavicula Nox”, yet expanded on those ideas in broad, sweeping brushstrokes. It does indeed have the quality of an oil painting, intricately textured and detailed. I’m hard pressed to explain why this piece of music hits me so hard… there’s something tranquil in the vastness of it’s plaintive acoustic guitars, patient piano patterns, and mournful organ melodies. The distant sounding choir vocal arrangements, particularly in the middle passage, glide gracefully through the ambient space, and the combined effect is something I find so profoundly spiritual and meditative that I’m always emotionally affected when listening to this piece of music. That it ends so unexpectedly bright and upbeat is fitting for Therion, particularly the addition of a Greek sounding melody on mandolin towards the end as a why the hell not accent, a charming bit of levity to punctuate the band’s most breathtaking moment.

I could keep citing my favorite moments, but these are simply albums that have to be experienced if you haven’t by now, or revisited if you had in the past but didn’t vibe with them for whatever reason. Therion would go on to continue making great music (the first in the Leviathan trilogy was my 2021 album of the year), and they’ve even attempted projects that would rival the scope and ambition of this twin album recording project (three albums if you consider that leftover material was used for 2010’s Sitra Ahra). But here Christofer and the Niemann brothers reached for the stars and actually touched them, creating a pair of albums that truly transcended symphonic metal as we know it and redefined what was possible within it’s framework. Their uniquely combined talents, Johnsson’s inexplicable ability to articulate his musical vision into reality and the Niemann brothers ability to help steer that vision here (also shoutout to the underrated and awesome Richard Evensand behind the kit) are what gave them such a strong musical identity throughout this era of the band from Deggial through Gothic Kabbalah, and though I love the new lineup for what they’ve brought to the table, I can’t help but have a soft spot for this particular Therion lineup. I’m happy to have finally written something about these particular albums, even if it sounds like the ramblings of a fanboy. These albums have been so important to me for so long, and this anniversary felt like a good time to remind myself of their magnificence, and others of their existence.

March 26, 2024 2024, Judas Priest Post a Comment

Sons of Thunder: Judas Priest’s Invincible Shield

Six years ago, when we collectively banged our heads in appreciation at Judas Priest’s excellent Firepower, there was a feeling that perhaps it would be their final album and that, damn, what a great way to go out. It felt like the guys rose to the occasion to deliver a purposefully classic early 80s style Priest meets modern production album (even the album cover evoked memories of Screaming For Vengeance), with still new guy Ritchie Faulkner continuing to steer the band towards their iconic sound and producer Andy Sneap delivering razor sharp sonics that more than made up for Redeemer of Souls glaring audio problems. But in the background of all this was Glenn Tipton’s battle with Parkinson’s, a reportedly very up and down one, KK Downing publicly voicing his shock and displeasure at not being asked to be back in the band while Sneap was tipped to fill in on the tour, a tour that would for the first time not feature either of the band’s original iconic guitarists. Then two years later the pandemic happened, postponing a US tour (that’s finally happening four years later, albeit not in Texas…) and of course putting the band’s activities on ice for a year and a half. Then came the ultra scary incident at the Louder Than Life Festival on September 26th, 2021 when Faulkner experienced a ruptured aorta onstage while playing “Painkiller” to close out Priest’s set and miraculously made it to the hospital in time for life saving surgery. If they had chose to call it a career at that point, I think most fans would understand.

Yet they’ve returned with Invincible Shield, an album aptly named considering the turbulence of the past few years for them (and all of us really), and to not bury the lede, it’s simply their finest album since Painkiller. Yeah, Priest’s nineteenth studio album, with a 72 year old Rob Halford sounding younger than he has in ages is their best work front to finish since 1990. That’s not to diminish Firepower in any way — in fact, I think I could argue that Firepower’s had more singular high points than Invincible Shield, but that overall as an album experience, the new Priest album is just thunderingly awesome in it’s songwriting, execution, and performances. For all the talk of this being the band’s best work since Painkiller (I’m not the only one saying that), I think its biggest strength lies in it not being a replica of that seminal album. Sure, the opener “Panic Attack” does sound like its built with the same approach that informed classics such as “All Guns Blazing” and, er… “Painkiller”, but give a closer listen to that intro sequence with the synthesizer guitar effects. That’s directly or indirectly a nod towards the Turbo era sound, it doesn’t really matter which because the effect was the same, to instantly evoke that era to any knowledgeable Priest fan. Unlike Firepower’s determination to stick to that early 80s Priest palette, Invincible Shield sees the band wrapping their arms unapologetically around (most of) their entire musical history.

Lets talk highlights here, because despite the entire album hitting the one hour mark yet not having a bum track in the bunch, there are some songs here that really had me hitting repeat and banging my head with a little more emphasis. The aforementioned “Panic Attack” is an obvious choice, being one of the band’s most convincing singles and album openers ever, but “Invincible Shield” itself could’ve easily filled in both of those same roles, Faulkner and Tipton (I think) spitting out fiery licks over imposing, mechanized riffs. And I love the hard rock Priest edge infused in “Devil In Disguise”, characterized by that kinda rockin’, strutting rhythmic shuffle that marked so much of early 80s Priest. I love the dip into slower, “A Touch of Evil” meets “Out In the Cold” territory on “Crown of Horns”, one of my personal favorites off the album. Not only is the songwriting emotionally affecting, the solid backbeat reinforced groove lets Halford show off his vocal chops via a simpler expression than his usual metal god attack. There’s something about the way he sings “…something grew inside of me…” during the second verse that I found incredibly raw and real. As a vocal moment, it was reminiscent of his recent duet with Dolly Parton on her recent new album, where he had to simmer down to complement her style. It’s a battle between that tune and “As God As My Witness” for my absolute favorite here, with it sometimes leaning towards the latter for its full barreled assault and glorious lead solo tradeoff midway through. And I have to praise “Trial By Fire” here, a slice of classic Priest, I love the way this is constructed, those cutting riffs slicing away under Rob’s half a beat behind vocals.

So why is this album so good? That answer I think begins with Ritchie Faulkner’s continued involvement as a primary songwriter within the group, continuing on the course plotted way back during the making of Redeemer of Souls. They’ve hinted as much in interviews, but I suspect they underplay just how much Faulkner really got the guys to abandon the progressive leanings they were exploring on Angel of Retribution and Nostradamus and just get back to the nuts and bolts of Priest’s sound. On Redeemer, they worked to get the songwriting headed back in the right direction, on Firepower, they brought in Andy Sneap and Priest’s longtime 80s producer Tom Allom to work together to craft a modern sonic identity for the band that was at once classic yet fresh. Now on Invincible Shield, they’ve realized the fruition of both of those collective efforts into something truly fully realized and bursting with an energy and excitement that a band this late in the game rarely delivers (Magnum did this through their last decade too, props). People have been comparing this record with the new Bruce Dickinson album, but that’s an apples and oranges comparison — they should be using it as a lens through which to regard Maiden’s last two studio albums, which sound stodgy and old in comparison. Priest deserves kudos for putting in the work to improve their art, and Maiden could learn a lesson or three from their generational peers, mostly that fresh blood in the creative process (*cough* producer) and refocusing the songwriting approach to get back to the essentials is something worth considering.

January 17, 2024 2023, Best of, reviews Post a Comment

The Metal Pigeon’s Best of 2023 // Part Two: The Albums

Here it is, part two of the Best of 2023 feature, with my top ten albums of the year, as always kept to a short list of ten, despite my having a mess of assorted runners up and one hard cut that could theoretically be called number eleven. For any newcomers to the blog, I don’t bother with numbering past the top ten, because with a few exceptions of certain lists I’m really interested in, I’ve always found it hard to parse out how numbering things for personal taste based lists matters much after that. This year I’ll gladly recommend checking out the recently dropped 2023 recap episode by our friends at The Metal Exchange Podcast, whose lengthily numbered lists (one of the aforementioned exceptions) are interesting because they cover quite a bit of stuff that I had either only listened to a few times or not heard at all, and their tastes closely align with mine. For my part, this list was maybe one of the more agonized over with the exception of the top slot, whom I’ve suspected was going to sit atop there for months and months now. The year started off slow, but surged as the months went on and we all had to play catch up, and the size of nominee pool this year was way more crowded than it had been these past couple years. It was great to see that within power metal we see signs of maybe things starting to turn around, with some really promising new artists represented on the list below, after it seemed like the subgenre had started to lose it’s way over the past few years. It’s also striking to see that six of the top ten albums on my list are from artists that were either new or certainly new to me, one of those small details that spells great things for the health of metal overall (or perhaps just my relationship to it, either way). If you want to hear about those other album nominees that didn’t make it, as well as my cohost Cary’s best of picks, check out our upcoming 2023 recap episode of the MSRcast podcast. And finally, the list:

1. Sacred Outcry – Towers of Gold:

I was thinking about this recently, the hypothetical idea that my favorite band of all time, Iron Maiden, could have released a near perfect throwback sounding album in 2023 reminiscent of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, and honestly, I’m still not sure it would be able to dislodge Towers of Gold from atop this list. That is just how genre defining this album is, a modern day power metal classic. One that in future discussions of essential power metal records, I’ll casually list alongside Keeper I&II, Nightfall in Middle Earth, Land of the Free, and frickin’ Ecliptica, just the whole damn list of records you love and know by heart and I don’t have the time and space to list right now! This is the most convincingly well done old school pure power metal record I’ve heard in ages, a complete start to finish compelling listening experience rife with intensity, grand drama, theatricality, and a level of emotion woven into the fabric of the songwriting that reminds me of when I first heard those classic Khan era Kamelot albums. Much of the attention of course is falling on what is seemingly a career renaissance defining performance for legendary vocalist Daniel Heiman, and rightfully so (more on him in a second), but to me the real star here is George Apalodimas’ songwriting and overall conceptual vision. The mythic storyline that serves as the musical and lyrical focal point throughout, of a band of adventurers who hungrily lust after the towers of gold they hear described by an old man at their inn is broad and vague enough to be filled in with grand impressionist brushstrokes, not detailed plot that can often bog down the songwriting in an effort to get across tiny details. Yet credit to Apalodimas here, because the premise of the lyrical narrative is still cleverly written in a first person style to create depth and immersion the way the best concept albums are (think Mindcrime), and not delivered like a children’s book of fables. It took me a few listens just taking everything in before some of the lyrics really began to pique my attention, but this was really the singular album in metal this year where I found my attention drifting to what Heiman was singing as opposed to just how he was singing it, a credit to the care and attention paid to the lyricism at work.

Of course let’s take a moment to talk about Mr. Heiman here, because he is a legendary power metal vocalist who not only commands interest in anything he does, but deserves his flowers here for turning in what maybe is one of the best performances in his career, alongside those Lost Horizon classics we all love. Consider his energizing, soaring tenor on galloping uptempo anthemic tunes such as “The Flame Rekindled” where he navigates highly rhythmic vocal lines and knows exactly where to pepper in those patented screams from the utter depths of his soul (what else can you call those?). I love some of the vocal decisions being made here, like an almost deliberately slower, stately approach to the vocal melody on “The Voyage” as the music surges ahead underneath, creating a billowing effect like you’re visualizing the wind hitting the sails of a ship at sea. The wild swings of his voice on “Into the Storm” are so rich and nuanced, really lending weight and gravitas to the storytelling, and of course the reason for a standing ovation here is his work on the best songs listee “Symphony of the Night”, where his he manages to somehow fit in distant screams into a performance that is achingly emotive while hushed and restrained, a masterclass in itself. This song is also a great example of the musical synergy coursing through this entire album, the guitar work by Steve Lado is wonderfully melodic, and expressively lyrical. Apalodimas’ own excellent bass work is actually a crucial element to many of these pieces, his playing reminds me of Eddie Jackson of Queensryche, a throbbing pulse that feeds so much of the sound being crafted here. And kudos to the technical drumming of Defkalion Dimos, who is a fill machine all throughout this album, and knows how to match the drama of the music when the intensity ramps up with a battering attack, but also creative patterns that are contrary to what you’d expect. Even though these guys are all new musicians to the project, with this as their first recording together, it all has the feel of a band that’s been playing together for a decade plus, and credit for that has to go to Apalodimas. I hope he can keep this lineup together, although I trust that he can deliver something great next time as well even if he’s unable to retain their services. I’m sure by now he knows that he’s achieved something spectacular with Towers of Gold, but just in case, here’s one more voice to join the already loud chorus of people proclaiming so.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2023)

2.  Skyblazer – Infinity’s Wings:

This album really took a journey to wind up at this placement on this list. At first I was keeping it off entirely because it just seemed like such a homer pick for someone like myself who is a massive fan of Power Quest, which is (among a few others such as Crystallion and Freedom Call) the chief influence driving Johannes Skyblazer in this project. Then I sheepishly slid it in at number ten down there because I couldn’t deny the sheer amount of times I listened to it. Yet as the weeks went on and I kept refining and re-ordering the list as I listened to all the candidates and jostled things around, I realized that it would be entirely disingenuous of me to not have this much much higher. And I can’t really say why it took so long to reach that conclusion — maybe its because Infinity’s Wings is the least heaviest record on this largely extreme metal dominated list, or maybe it’s because of its unintentionally home studio sounding, semi-amateurish production (which I think is a charming strength of the album, but I know that might be a minority opinion). What I know for absolute certain however, is that my introduction to Skyblazer this year was downright poetic in that Power Quest unceremoniously announced their retirement with a simple press release in February, so this album felt like a passing of the torch for this particular style of power metal. Johannes nails what makes this keyboard driven, energetic, bright-toned, euphoric power metal sound so appealing, and he writes suitably anthemic songs to match, loaded with memorable hooks, soaring melodies, and sharp chord progressions. Unlike his heroes, who had the benefit of full band lineups and recording studios, Skyblazer is essentially a one man project, with Johannes handling all the songwriting, recording, and lead vocals on his own (with some assists from a few guests). Admitting in interviews that his audio production can’t compete with the bigger bands, he’s expressed hope that his attention to the songwriting would compensate, and I think he has achieved that in spades. The result is a unique sound, even apart from his influences although their spirit flows eagerly through this album. In a year where I loudly complained about the state of popular power metal as disheartening, dumb garbage, Infinity’s Wings was among a handful of defiantly earnest, heart on sleeve, shimmering jewels that showed me and others that there are still artists out there who remember why this style of music meant so much to many of us in the past, and can continue to going forward.

3.  Serenity – Nemesis AD:

Sometimes, the injection of new blood in a lineup can act as an immediate catalyst for creative growth in a band, as opposed to forcing growing pains that need to be endured. With the exception of one truly inspired album (2016’s Codex Atlanticus) in the immediate wake of longtime guitarist Thomas Buchberger’s departure in 2014, Serenity had been adrift creatively in the past few years — and it seemed like Georg Neuhauser might have felt that somewhat as well, launching new side projects with Warkings and Fallen Sanctuary. The latter of these projects saw him pair up with Temperance songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Marco Pastorini, and yielded a pretty enjoyable, hard rock meets AOR meets power metal record. Credit to Neuhauser then for realizing that Pastorini would give Serenity some needed juice, because Nemesis AD is their best album since War of Ages, hearkening back to the magic they had with the Buchberger lineup. I already discussed how 2023’s best songs list topper “Reflections (of AD)” made me giddy with euphoria, but I didn’t get to mention how “Ritter, Tod und Teufel (Knightfall)” brimmed with the kind of Sonata Arctica meets Kamelot prog-power bliss that echoed shades of their classic Death & Legacy album. Nor did I get to mention how glory-claw inducingly epic the Roy Khan duet “The Fall of Man” turned out (that Kamelot influence coming full circle), nor how utterly charming the sweepingly melodramatic and achingly sweet Broadway-inspired power ballad “Crowned by an Angel” was, a tune Tobias Sammet would have loved to have penned. Pastorini’s influence is felt all throughout this album, the songs are sharper, the melodies sweeter, and there’s an overall sense that this band feels creatively renewed once again.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2023)

4.  Sorcerer – Reign of the Reaper:

Expansive, cinematic, spiritual, and downright Epic with a capital E, Sorcerer delivered the finest album of what has been a stellar string of solid to excellent releases since their full band resurrection in 2015. They are to my mind, ascending the heights of trad laden doom metal in terms of artistic output to justifiably be compared to the greats of the subgenre in Candlemass. Despite it’s late October release date, this album casts such a large shadow over this list, that it was one of the first candidates I wrote down when compiling the list, and an easy one to highlight for one of the these ten spots. So much went right on this album, and it was due to the band playing around with their epic doom metal formula a bit. Where they leaned very doomy on 2020’s Lamenting of the Innocent which I feel led in large part to that album’s tendency to drag — they reversed course for Reign of the Reaper, introducing more classic heavy metal songwriting into the mix and restricting the doomier parts of their sound to aspects such as guitar tone, dense riffing, and keyboard derived cinematic atmospheres. As a result, the songwriting got sharper, more reminiscent of the clinic they put on in 2017’s The Crowning of the Fire King, songs oriented around not only memorable hooks, but recurrent melodic motifs articulated by Kristian Niemann’s impeccable signature lead guitarwork (seriously he’s cemented himself as one of my all-time favorite guitarists). This lean towards more traditional metal also opened up things for vocalist Anders Engberg to craft some of his most soulful and expressive vocal performances to date, reminding me in many spots (especially those soft sung intros) of the great Ronnie James Dio. You’ve probably noticed that “Morning Star” landed high on the Best Songs of 2023, but the truth is that this entire album was filled with truly incredible songs with little amazing moments all their own and it’d take way too long to go through them all. Just trust me and put this on and let it spin if you haven’t already, it’s one of the most satisfying listens of the year.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2023)

5.  Gatekeeper – From Western Shores:

Undoubtedly one of the strongest front to finish metal albums of the year, Gatekeeper pushed aside any notion of the sophomore slump with their stellar second album From Western Shores. I remember not feeling the buzz that came with their debut many years back, despite giving it a shot largely due to it’s Cruz Del Sur label pedigree, but this album really delivered on what I saw then as budding potential. Part of the success here is just how well new vocalist Tyler Anderson fits the band’s upgraded sound here, his Eric Adams meets Chris Black dichotomous approach meshing perfectly with the more polished production that the Gatekeeper guys have employed this time around. On that subject, the band’s musical DNA of stripped down epic USPM is still preserved here entirely, but the guitars are fuller, lusher, particularly leads and harmonies, and the rhythm section seems tighter than on the debut, giving all these songs a heft and weight that winds up being the central element to this album’s success. With that bedrock in place, guitarists Jeff Black and new guy Adam Bergen are left with free reign to run amok with a flurry of inspired melodies, tight harmonies, and impeccably satisfying solos. Anderson can veer from wild, David DeFeis style yowling moments to these very straight faced Manilla Road meets Dawnbringer style vocals where his tone approaches something akin to a style that would fit in on a stoner metal album, and he covers the spectrum in between, in his best moments here reminding me of 80’s Jon Oliva. This is masterfully done epic power metal with purposefully rougher edges, a heavy bottom end and bared teeth in riffs and attitude, all on a damn near perfect album.

6.  Cloak – Black Flame Eternal:

The yearly surprise out-of-leftfield album to make the list is becoming a Metal Pigeon tradition by this point, and this year the honor goes to Atlanta, Georgia’s Cloak, who delivered the most convincing and addictive extreme metal album of the year. Their sound is a blend of intense, grimy black metal with lush gothic metal melodic overtones in a fusion that is as inspired as anything we’ve seen in this space since Tribulation. This is their third album, and despite being on Season of Mist who have a pretty broad promotional reach, this band apparently sailed under the radars of both myself and others I know because we didn’t even play them on the MSRcast until this album came out. But better late than never of course, and although this album leapt out to me as ultra hooky and addictive the moment I listened to it, I didn’t realize how much I loved it until I started doing play count analytics and realized it was one of my most listened to albums in 2023, only second to Sacred Outcry in sheer numbers. I think the reason I came back to it repeatedly is that beyond the catchy riffs and clever blending of rockin’ heavy metal riffs into the whole gothic black metal mix, there is a tremendous amount of depth going on here. Take the two marching, rumbling epics that bookend the album, where the band confidently uses gradual tempo changes and spacious silence to build to impactful climaxes. And “With Fury and Allegiance” is built on such a excellent riff progression, simultaneously furious, melodic, and cinematic in it’s breadth (this song narrowly missed the best songs list). That explosive thrust that occurs at 3:36 (“Come silent night…”) was one of my favorite singular metal moments of the year, earning a fist pump every time I heard it no matter how ridiculous I must have looked.

7.  Keep of Kalessin – Katharsis:

Talk about an album that shook the jaded metalhead right out of me when I first listened to it back in what, April? It was just one album among a long list of them I was playing while talking a walk in a park on one of our nicer spring days. I suppose I’ll forever associate the album with my memory of that day, because I remember it was really the first album of the whole year that really thrilled me in that basic, fundamental way of just being a metal fan. This album was not only aggressively heavy in blasts, and full of all the meaty riffs and excellent scream/harshes that have characterized the band’s sound all these many years — but it just swept over me with it’s grandiosity and sense of adventure. I hear this combination most vividly in songs such as “Hellride” with its skyrocketing upward surge when the chorus hits, that rare kind of moment that I love when sustained intensity is compounded with a blast of even more intensity. The band’s sense of melodicism seemed to spill over the edges everywhere here, as on the Enthrone Darkness Triumphant invoking “War of the Wyrm”, where the inclusion of a semi-spoken word section actually enhanced the dramatic sweep of the song, rather than sucking all the momentum out like most bands tend to do when trying it. That melodicism characterized the Best Songs of 2023 listee “Journey’s End”, a bittersweet, emotive ballad that served as a perfect mid-album meditation and mood changer. And I was struck by how much power metal influence seemed to creep into the whole affair here, particularly on the epic “Throne of Execration”, where I felt major Blind Guardian/Andre Olbrich vibes happening on the harmonized lead guitars that poured a gorgeous melody out over the top towards the outro of the song. This was genuinely a multi-faceted album that hit all my metal sweet spots in various moments, molded together by creative and inspired songwriting and the feel of listening to something expansive, far reaching, and ambitious.

(Also appears on: The Metal Pigeon’s Best Songs of 2023)

8.  Moonlight Sorcery – Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle:

It’s not very often that you can aptly describe a black metal album as sounding magical, and dare I go further, sparklingly magical(!), but Finland’s Moonlight Sorcery achieves exactly that in a combination of symphonic power metal inspired ultra melodicism via keyboard synths and neoclassical guitar leads strewn across Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle. And maybe its the fact that I’ve been reading up on moon druids for DnD recently (nerd!), but this amalgam of sounds really does live up to the band’s name, sounding for all the world like the soundtrack to a swords and sorcery fantasy adventure-RPG videogame at times (blackened vocals aside). I was recommended this album by several people gushing about it all at once around October, and it’s rare that something manages to grab so many people’s attentions all at once these days when we’re usually all on different pages regarding everything. Guitarist and main songwriter Matti Meri-Huhti (credited as “Loitsumestari Taikakallo” here) seems to be the architect of this fusion, and I’d be a little shocked if he wasn’t a major Yngwie Malmsteen fan at some point in his life because his leads remind me of the Swedish master, tastefully articulated and thoughtfully patterned. Hearing this kind of lead playing set against the backdrop of pretty faithful, yet polished up second wave Norwegian black metal is such a refreshing and novel contrast. There have been examples where other artists have tried something close to this, but nothing that ever went all in on that sharp of a contrast the way Moonlight Sorcery have accomplished here. The culminating apex here for me is “Into the Silvery Shadows of the Night”, a hauntingly beautiful stately dirge with a mystical sounding lead melody ushering us during the outro. This is without a doubt one of the most memorable black metal albums of the last five, possibly ten years, definitely an easy one to return to.

9.  Immortal – War Against All:

In the spirit of not overthinking this one, this second post Abbath Immortal album just flat out rocked me ever since it’s release this summer, somehow managing to outdo the triumphant 2018 comeback Northern Chaos Gods. And you know, Demonaz has always had the right to lay claim to being at least fifty percent of the formula that made Immortal so successful, but what’s shocking is just how he’s managed to shake off the notion that Abbath was largely the musical driving force in the band. This new album sees Demonaz continuing the look back towards the band’s early, more blistering paced releases, while dropping a nod towards the mid-paced era they’d start to explore towards the turn of the millennium. That he manages to accomplish this while keeping the production crisp and pristine (yet not polished) is a testament to how well he understands what made those great Immortal records so undeniably appealing to audiences beyond black metal. Songs such as “War Against All”, “Blashyrkh My Throne”, and “Wargod” are catchy as all get out, and have that thrashy edge that I often wish more black metal bands would employ. I also appreciate that he hasn’t tried to stray from the tried and true fantastical Immortal style, going all in on the band’s mythos and fantasy steeped tales, as on “No Sun” with it’s tale of the mountain of evil (where there rises no sun, duh). I’ve seen people take some sideswipes at Demonaz for continuing the Blashyrkh mythos throughout the lyrics, and I want to shout at them to clear the hall — the imagery informs the sound and vice versa, its grim and frostbitten and that’s why we loved this band and all their classic albums. That Demonaz convincingly continues that spirit on War Against All is something to appreciate and cherish, not jadedly dismiss.

10.  Majesties – Vast Reaches Unclaimed:

Considering all the hype and subsequent disappointment of the recent In Flames “return to form” nonsense that occurred earlier in the year, my lack of enthusiasm for the recent Insomnium album, and also counting the semi-bummer that was The Halo Effect’s debut album last year, I had felt myself jaded about the prospect of anything genuinely interesting hitting me from the melodic death metal space this year. Enter in this under the radar release from Majesties, a Minneapolis based side project from the two dudes from Antiverse, guitarists Carl Skildum and Matthew Kirkwold (who plays bass here), joining together with vocalist/guitarist Tanner Anderson from the vaunted Obsequiae (I loved The Palms of Sorrowed Kings, sadly discovering it well after it’s 2019 release). Um, these guys must be kindred spirits to me in craving old school sounding Gothenburg melodeath with no core or modern melodic death influences whatsoever, because Vast Reaches Unclaimed is pure musical comfort food. Sounding like a cross between Lunar Strain era In Flames, Skydancer era Dark Tranquility, and a lost Gates of Ishtar album, this is a revisitation of a sound that few can imitate and whose progenitors have long abandoned. These guys just get it, the harmonized leads, the density of the crunchy riffing, Anderson’s perfectly mixed vocals (lower than the guitars, somewhat distant and appropriately hoarse as a sharp contrast to all the vibrant melody happening). A true longform, full album listening experience, I’ve returned to this album again and again almost as a nostalgia soaked soundtrack to go about my day to. It’s genuinely difficult to pick a favorite song here or stand out riff because it just keeps on coming, like an ever flowing stream (heyo!). This might be the first thing I’ve heard since… well, first hearing classic melodeath back in the day, that really took me back to the feeling I experienced when first stumbling onto those classic records and that awesome sound I love so much.

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