Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony (2010)

After the lackluster “Scarecrow” we finally get the real Avantasia back with “The Wicked Symphony”, one of the two albums released by Tobias Sammet super band. As you all know the band features legendary drummer Eric Singer alongside Sascha Paeth on guitars, and Michael Rodenberg on Keyboards.

Aside the super band behind Avantasia we have an impressive amounts of guest musicians and vocalists such as Michael Kiske, Tim "Ripper" Owens, and André Matos just to mention a few. The music in “The Wicked Symphony” is closer to “The Metal Opera” than to “Scarecrow”, making this release a brilliant example of what can Symphonic Power Metal should sound like.

Tobias Sammet playing the bass guitar and handling the vocal duties does a great job in mixing his characteristic voice alongside the guest vocalists, and surrounds it with super bombastic music that will blow you away since the first song. While there are still some hard rock influences, they are not as evident (or terrible) as on “Scarecrow”.

This example of almost perfect Symphonic Power Metal music is greatly aided by the diversity that the guest singers bring to the table. The albums songs are very well balanced between power ballads and balls-to-the-wall Power Metal anthems that will surely gain back all the fans that Avantasia lost after their 2008 release.

As you can expect from such quality of musicians, all the songs are brilliantly composed and meticulously executed to perfection. Avantasia is a monster when it comes to creating highly melodic and powerful songs. Every single track on this release has its own identity and different points that will make you love them one by one and as a whole, since the album flows very nicely.

It’s hard to determine which songs are better in “The Wicked Symphony” since all of them are brilliant, but for us “The Wicked Symphony” and “Runaway Train” stand out from the rest as our favorites. But this will change from person to person since this release features a bit of everything for everybody.

In overall “The Wicked Symphony” is one of the best releases that Avantasia, and even Tobias Sammet has ever released. The album as a whole is very diverse and powerful, something that will surely please all the fans of the genre. Now we need to get ready to start listening to the other CD that Avantasia released at the same time: “Angel Of Babylon”, hopefully is as good as this one.

Release: May 4th, 2010

Country: Germany