Tobias Sammet’s personal playground, Avantasia, returns with The Wicked Symphony, one of two brand new albums. The Wicked Symphony is the continuation of the project’s last album The Scarecrow and is again stacked with a crazy list of guest musicians including Eric Singer (Kiss, Alice Cooper), Klaus Meine (Scorpions), Tim Owens (Judas Priest, Charred Walls of the Damned, Iced Earth, Yngwie J. Malmsteen), Russell Allen (Symphony X), and plenty more.
While I realize that there are many very, very die hard fans of this band, in my opinion they didn’t get rolling until The Scarecrow. While I love Edguy’s entire catalog, Avantasia has been a bit harder to access for my musical tastes. If you have similar thoughts on this than The Wicked Symphony will be tremendously pleasing to you. While there is plenty of virtuosity to go around, Sammet keeps a lot of this album on the straight and narrow hard rock road constantly reminding us that he loves the traditional sounds of Iron Maiden, Doro, late eighties/early nineties Scorpions, and Helloween.
The title track opens the album as a nine minute epic that feels a lot shorter than it actually is. It’s a balls out rocker that just sounds tailor made to be sung by gigantic festival crowds as if that moment was the only thing that mattered. “Wastelands,” “Forever is a Long Time,” and “States of Matter” are all similar in what they go for musically (that being the big anthem sound). As always, Sammet makes no bones about the fact that he has an extremely keen ear for crafting wonderful radio friendly songs as well with the inclusion of the absolutely awesome “Dying for an Angel” (with the Scorpions Klaus Meine) and the slightly edgy but big balladry of “Runaway Train.”
Overall, this is every bit as good as The Scarecrow. I’d hesitate to say its better but a few more spins might convince me to push it over the edge. If you are a fan of the Metal Opera albums or early years Edguy than this will most likely continue to seem like a sellout to you. Which would also be a shame for you. There are few truly interesting hard rock bands these days and Avantasia is one you definitely do not want to miss out on.
Reviewed by Mark Fisher
