Sonata Arctica's follow up to
their acclaimed debut Ecliptica will no doubt keep
hardcore fans of the band animated and happy. For me, I was hoping for more than
that album was able to provide me, and unfortunately I didn't really find that.
The fast paced, high intensity, at your jugular songs on Silence are some of the best this band has produced. "Weballergy" opens the album at a cracking pace, and from the outset it feels as though this could be the direct extension the band needed to take. "False News Travel Fast" continues in this direction, punchy and driven by the double kick drums and flying keyboard. "Black Sheep" is a good song that doesn't really showcase anything particularly metal, but moves along at a good tempo with a flailing guitar solo. "San Sebastian (Revisited)" again has that speed driven by the drums to give it some real momentum and wonderful vocals. Along with "Wolf & Raven" later in the piece, these are the stand out songs for me on the album, and if there had been more of them this could have been a real classic.
The major downfall of the power metal album is the constant power ballad. Dear oh dear, these kinds of songs just rip the heart out of an album and consign them to mediocre status. It is such a contradiction in terms, power and ballad. Because for all intents and purposes, there is very little if any power in these ballads.
"The End of This Chapter" is the first to arrive on this album, piano and keyboard dominated, while the vocals reach for their emotive state to tug at the heartstrings. "Last Drop Falls" and "Sing in Silence" also fall into this category to a certain degree, if only for a majority if not all of the song. "Tallulah" is the worst, it being in the Bryan Adams or Michael Bolton class of dreadful sappy unresponsive rubbish.
If bands want to make songs like this, then fine. Do it. But how about you put ALL of them on ONE album, put a big sticker on it to inform everyone exactly what the album contains, and allow those of us who just don't want to know to completely ignore it, and buy your albums that have the best songs on them. I mean, for goodness sakes, "Tallulah" is followed by the brilliant "Wolf & Raven" that careers along at breakneck speed throughout, barely stopping to take a breath. Everything about it screams speed metal, and yet the previous song was a sop-driven bore-fest. I just can't understand it. "Tallulah" is an automatic skip song. In the old days of transferring vinyl to cassettes to play in the car it would never have made my taped copy, and in this day of electronic media and so forth, you can even erase it from existence.
But somehow it isn't over. The lengthy and overblown finale of "The Power of One" just seems needlessly long. It starts, it stops, it goes fast, it goes slow, it wants to be a metal song, it wants to be a ballad. Does it want to be "Bohemian Rhapsody"? I don't know, but given that it doesn't know what it wants to be it's a little hard to take. Parts of the song are terrific, but others just are mystifying. Time and mood changes at odd parts of the song make it hard to stay in synch with. It feels like they wanted to pull every trick in the 'power metal song writing' handbook in one song.
I want to love this band so much more than I am able to. Their musicianship is flawless, the vocals are pitch perfect. The trappings of the genre mean however that I am unable to enjoy a lot of their music because it just isn't in me to like it, and that is a real shame. Those that love this style of metal will probably embrace this album with vigour. I can only admire what it is, enjoy the parts of it that I do, and move on from the rest.
The fast paced, high intensity, at your jugular songs on Silence are some of the best this band has produced. "Weballergy" opens the album at a cracking pace, and from the outset it feels as though this could be the direct extension the band needed to take. "False News Travel Fast" continues in this direction, punchy and driven by the double kick drums and flying keyboard. "Black Sheep" is a good song that doesn't really showcase anything particularly metal, but moves along at a good tempo with a flailing guitar solo. "San Sebastian (Revisited)" again has that speed driven by the drums to give it some real momentum and wonderful vocals. Along with "Wolf & Raven" later in the piece, these are the stand out songs for me on the album, and if there had been more of them this could have been a real classic.
The major downfall of the power metal album is the constant power ballad. Dear oh dear, these kinds of songs just rip the heart out of an album and consign them to mediocre status. It is such a contradiction in terms, power and ballad. Because for all intents and purposes, there is very little if any power in these ballads.
"The End of This Chapter" is the first to arrive on this album, piano and keyboard dominated, while the vocals reach for their emotive state to tug at the heartstrings. "Last Drop Falls" and "Sing in Silence" also fall into this category to a certain degree, if only for a majority if not all of the song. "Tallulah" is the worst, it being in the Bryan Adams or Michael Bolton class of dreadful sappy unresponsive rubbish.
If bands want to make songs like this, then fine. Do it. But how about you put ALL of them on ONE album, put a big sticker on it to inform everyone exactly what the album contains, and allow those of us who just don't want to know to completely ignore it, and buy your albums that have the best songs on them. I mean, for goodness sakes, "Tallulah" is followed by the brilliant "Wolf & Raven" that careers along at breakneck speed throughout, barely stopping to take a breath. Everything about it screams speed metal, and yet the previous song was a sop-driven bore-fest. I just can't understand it. "Tallulah" is an automatic skip song. In the old days of transferring vinyl to cassettes to play in the car it would never have made my taped copy, and in this day of electronic media and so forth, you can even erase it from existence.
But somehow it isn't over. The lengthy and overblown finale of "The Power of One" just seems needlessly long. It starts, it stops, it goes fast, it goes slow, it wants to be a metal song, it wants to be a ballad. Does it want to be "Bohemian Rhapsody"? I don't know, but given that it doesn't know what it wants to be it's a little hard to take. Parts of the song are terrific, but others just are mystifying. Time and mood changes at odd parts of the song make it hard to stay in synch with. It feels like they wanted to pull every trick in the 'power metal song writing' handbook in one song.
I want to love this band so much more than I am able to. Their musicianship is flawless, the vocals are pitch perfect. The trappings of the genre mean however that I am unable to enjoy a lot of their music because it just isn't in me to like it, and that is a real shame. Those that love this style of metal will probably embrace this album with vigour. I can only admire what it is, enjoy the parts of it that I do, and move on from the rest.
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