Avantasia – Moonglow
Release Date: February 15, 2019
Tobias Sammet has once again stepped away from his ridiculously horrible full-time band Edguy to assemble a cast of characters for his massive epic, conceptual supergroup Avantasia. The first time I ever heard Avantasia was on 2009’s The Wicked Symphony. Up to this point, I had never heard anything like this and I really loved it. I loved the fact that there was an underlying concept but that the concept didn’t overtake the actual performances of great songs such as, “The Wicked Symphony,” “Wastelands”, and “Dying for an Angel.” Avantasia has since released four albums including their latest opus, Moonglow.
In listening to this album, it realized that this is not much more than the 4th mediocre take on the extraordinary The Wicked Symphony. I think the songs on The Wicked Symphony were so perfectly sculpted and it was a great example of capturing lightning in a bottle. Every album since has been a miss for me.
Moonglow, while better than the previous three still just comes across as a pompous display of songs that are way longer than they need to be and spotlights unexciting songs that failed to capture me and actually make me feel something.
The opening track, “Ghost in the Moon,” starts out promising but then all of the sudden morphed into this excruciatingly long Queen meets Rocky Horror Picture Show nine-minute opus. For some reason, it also reminded me of the movie The Never Ending Story leading me to dub this song, “The Never Ending Song.” “Book of Shallows” is actually a great song that reminds me of something that should’ve been on The Wicked Symphony. This song also features Jorn Lande ripping shit up so that probably helped a great deal in making this song a good one.
“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” is another song that was really great but was only as strong as it was thanks to guest vocalists, Geoff Tate, Jorn Lande, and Mr. Big vocalist Eric Martin. This song is definitely a power metal classic and I really enjoyed this song. The one that really sunk this ship was a cover of Michael Sambello’s “Maniac.” Why did Tobias even think this was a good idea. If Moonglow was already a sinking ship, this song was the final hit that sank this thing to the ocean floor.
With Avantasia, I feel like Tobias Sammet has run his well completely dry and is now just grasping at straws. I’m sure all of the ProgPower minions out there will just eat this one up and call it album of the year or something but honestly, this had to be one of the biggest wastes of time in 2019 so far. If I got anything out of this album is that Eric Martin, Geoff Tate, and Jorn Lande would sound amazing on a record together, Jorn Lande is still one of the baddest singers in the land, and that I think I could do without ever hearing anything Tobial Sammet has to offer from here on out. I’ll take my Wicked Symphony and enjoy that one with pride.
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