918. Russell Allen & Jorn Lande / The Revenge. 2007. 2.5/5

When I first discovered this project a few years ago, the attraction was the combination of two of the great modern day vocalists, literally battling it out on an album, trying to outdo the other on each song. Surely, if you are going to call an album The Battle, this is what is going to happen, right? OK, well it wasn't quite that, but the concept had enough momentum after that first release to see it repeated again two years later, which brought forth The Revenge.

As with the first album, the driving creative force is Magnus Karlsson, who created all of the music and lyrics, as well as playing the majority of the instruments. It's quite a construction, to practically have complete control over the whole project as though it were a solo album, and yet the end result is titled after the two lead vocalists, and it is their participation that draws in the fans rather than Magnus himself.
Once again, as with the first album of this project, there is a mixture of styles within the general euro metal genre that this sits. With one person in the main chair when it comes to writing and recording the songs, there is the danger that it can get a bit monotonous, or with a similar streak running through the backbone of the songs on the album. Formula-driven is probably the phrase I'm looking for, and this was countered on the earlier effort by the extraordinary voices of the two combatants, Russell Allen and Jorn Lande. To be honest, that hasn't changed too much this time around. Perhaps the main bone of contention I have with this album is that we heard most of this on the first album. Personally after that effort, and with a second album coming out, I was hoping for something more, a stretch from the usual to extend the talents of the two vocalists. I was looking for more of the 'battle', or for the combination of the two to push each other to new heights. While much of the material here is fine and listenable, none of it is remarkable. There was again a real chance to give these two guys a chance to 'bond' on tracks, but it doesn't really show. Perhaps not surprisingly, their combination works much better on their shared pieces in Tobias Sammet's Avantasia project than they do here.
That's not to say this is a lost cause. Completely. There are songs that have the right energy musically and duelling vocally that make them well worth listening to. Perhaps most telling is that, as both vocalists have so many other projects that they are involved in, that everything here gets judged against those, and it therefore makes it difficult case for these songs, given that they had no hand in writing any part of them, and that that job fell to one person. But their singing is magnificent again here, and they are at their best when they have some real energy in the track and they extend their range with emotion and desire. On the tracks that are slowed down and are looking for melancholy and reflection (ok, look, they're pretty much power ballads, but let's not get into that argument again) they still sound great, but the tracks don't work as well.

Overall, after the initial excitement wore off of the first album's partnership, you are left with the same kind of material here on the second album, but it just doesn't have the same impact this time around. Everything is performed with precision and it all sounds magnificent. In the long run, it's all just a little... boring.

Rating:  "Soon you will understand, soon you will see"  2.5/5