Avantasia - 'Moonglow' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Ghost In The Moon

2. Book Of Shallows

3. Moonglow

4. The Raven Child

5. Starlight

6. Invincible

7. Alchemy

8. The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

9. Lavender

10. Requiem For A Dream

11. Maniac

12. Heart

Do you like your Metal loud, expansive, melodic and symphonic? Then this album is most definitely one for you. As an entity, Avantasia remind me of the excess of Meatloaf coupled with the musicianship of Iron Maiden and just a dash of Dragonforce. And as a combination, that is irresistible.

The nearly 10-minute long “Ghost In The Moon” is a fantastic opening track, a swooping, multi-part epic that sets the stage for everything that is about to come throughout the rest of this album. And then we plough into track two – “Book Of Shallows”, and that’s when I fell in love with this album. As a Symphonic Metal supergroup, Avantasia have taken full advantage of the range of guests available to them, with this album featuring Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids), Geoff Tate (Queensryche), Michael Kiske (ex-Helloween) and Bob Catley (Magnum) among others. This selection of different singers really allows the album to be varied, and means that each track hits you with a new vibe – nothing settles down and runs the risk of getting boring.

As well as those first two tracks, my favourites are 'Starlight', which is one of the shortest tracks on the album, but is full of fury, and 'Requiem For A Dream', which is just brilliant. There’s not really a weak track here – if I was pushed, I’d say that 'Invincible' is my least favourite, but I’m not likely to skip it while listening through the album or anything. Like other Symphonic Metal albums, 'Moonglow' definitely benefits from being listened to in one glorious sitting. Yes, you could pick a track or two to pop into a playlist, but the whole is definitely greater than the sum of it’s parts in this instance.

Find yourself a spare 70 minutes or so, and just pop this on, close your eyes and let the sheer musicianship wash over you. This is definitely an album that deserves your time.

In case you can’t tell, I loved 'Moonglow'. It is fast, it is furious, it is everything I want in an album – I’d never sat down and listened to Avantasia before, but I will be checking out the rest of their back catalogue based on this album. This is absolutely superb.