Ballads Away: What Kind of Love

Despite my negative reviews of Avantasia's two follow-up CDs to The Scarecrow, I really can say I liked The Scarecrow a lot. This is perhaps my favourite song from that release, and it features Amanda Somerville, who has collaborated not only with Avantasia but also quite a lot with Epica, and she is also Simone Simon's vocal coach. While her solo stuff isn't exactly my cup of tea, I do love her voice. She even filled in for Simone during a tour when Simone was ill, and she did a wicked job from what I can tell from YouTube footage I saw of her performances.

Here is "What Kind of Love." Enjoy!

CD Review: Avantasia's Angel of Babylon

Well, I can give you a much more definitive assessment of Avantasia's Angel of Babylon.

It's bad. Really bad.

With this album, I feel like someone just stuck a sharp object in Tobias Sammet & crew and deflated them into something vaguely resembling a flat tire. The energy just isn't there in any song. It's bland, it's boring, it's almost bizarrely lame & cheesy. The only song I remotely thought was OK was the first track, "Stargazers," but even that was one of Sammet's weaker offerings here.

I didn't have super high expectations after listening to TWS, but this was surprisingly awful. Holy shit, Tobias: what were you thinking?

This CD and TWS were released together, but I don't think that was a good idea. My sense it that Tobias ran out of steam and just wanted to get this over and done with, because the quality of this album is just not up to his usual standards. It's half-assed-ness is very apparent in each track. I think all of Tobias's creative energy went into TWS and when it came to AOB, there wasn't anything left in the tank.

At least, that's how it felt to me.

And if there was any iota of a concept in this so-called trilogy, it is now as clear as sludge.

There is a female presence here, in the form of a certain Cloudy Yang. I had never heard of her before this album, and I am not terribly inspired to hear any more. Her song on AOB, "Symphony of Life" is one of the weakest songs on the CD. And that is all I'm going to say about that.

So, this is one unfortunate release, I am sorry to say. Even the cover art is not up to par with the previous two albums! I feel like I've wasted an hour of my life listening to this and I am upset!

A definite horns down. /w\