Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 02:09 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Doom
Country: Sweden
Label: Nuclear Blast
Year: 2014
The talented bunch that grand master Leif Edling gathered for his latest musical vehicle was already tested in other circumstances either with Candlemass, Krux, AbstraktAlgebra or his solo album of 2008. The fact is though that the shining diamond of the band is none other than Jennie-Ann Smith. The priestess with the ethereal, angelic voice is the ingredient that holds Avatarium a step above the rest bands of the style. Of course the well-known song-writing abilities of the godfather of doom played a huge role in the band’s success in such a crowded scene. Heavy music with a strong 70’s feeling seems to be a trend nowadays but with their first release of 2013 Avatarium was separated from the crowd as a musical outfit that really showed potential with strong compositions full of inspiration. With ‘All I want’ EP they present two new songs and three live versions of songs featured on their debut.
The overall impression I got from the first hearing was that: We have two new good songs that stands up to the bands previous material but with much lighter/softened sound that reaches even late 60’s early 70’s psychedelic sound combined with a lot ‘suspicious’ pop elements. ‘All I want’ is a song composed by Mr. Edling and is the heavier of the two. It starts with a nice heavy riff and builds up to a powerful chorus where you can’t help but admire the godly voice of Jennie. It has a ‘blurry’ solo in the middle and some strange percussion I found a little annoying to be honest, the whole bridge to the ending of the song sounded very Led Zeppelin to me which is not necessarily a bad thing. ‘Deep Well’ is a bit longer composition writtenby guitarist Marcus Jidell and Jennie-Ann Smith. It starts smoothly keeping a slow ‘intoxicated’ pace until full psychedelia blows up towards the end with a great Pink Floyd-ish outro. The band sounds tighter than ever, they seem to play more natural, the evidence of this claim lies in the amazing live versions of Pandora’s Egg, Tides Of Telepathy and Bird Of Pray.‘All I want’ seems to be a decent release but I would be happier if they threw in a couple of cover songs to make the package even more tempting.
Don’t expect to hear classic Leif Edling material. The ghost of Candlemass is completely gone. The band seems to be taking a new direction. All we can do is waiting for the full length album for safest conclusions.
3,5/6
