AVATARIUM: Death Where Is Your Sting (HARD ROCK,Doom): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Initially the fruit of the collaboration between Leif Edling, bassist and founder of Candlemass, and Marcus Jidell, former guitarist of Evergrey, Avatarium seems to have spent its first ten years of existence trying to free itself from the crushing imprint of the Swedish doom legend. Six albums (including this last one) have been released, refining a very particular identity, shaped at first in the Doom covered with female vocals but to which Jidell injects a flamboyant dose of progressive metal and hard rock. As a result, Avatarium is unlike any other.

With this signature that belongs only to them ,Avatarium continues to walk its way, to work its art at its own pace, without reaping the success it deserves, as shown by its relegation to the second division by leaving Nuclear Blast (which hosted it since its beginnings) for the more modest AFM. But it doesn't care about that, as shown by this "Death, Where Is Your Sting", which is both in accordance with the standards established by its elders but nevertheless quite surprising, not to say disconcerting. This sixth album is undoubtedly in the wake of its predecessors because it contains all the invariants of its authors. Female vocals as powerful as emotional, tenebrous and misty arrangements are the main markers of this signature cast in an evolving, twilight and romantic doom, that a track like 'Stockholm' embodies perfectly. We recognize Avatarium from the first notes.

However, the successor of "Fire I Long For" is sometimes no less confusing. Its construction turns out to be curious, following a progression whose logic is hard to understand. The menu starts with the darkly languid 'A Love Like Ours' and ends with the mysterious 'Transcendent', an instrumental track that is at the same time ramshackle and orchestral, mellow and disturbing, haunted by a cello that is present during a good part of the whole. The opus is also surprising in its diversity and its ability to change tone. It can sink into a pure sabbath-like cauldron ('God Is Silent' or the gigantic 'Nocturne'), slacken during a numb ballad that is illuminated by a beautiful solo ('Mother Can Your Hear Me Now'), display a skeletal form but growl with a dull tension ('Psalm For The Living') or wander in the middle of a falsely light trail like the eponymous track.

All along, "Death, Where Is Your Sting" blurs the tracks, displays several faces, different but complementary. It will surprise, perhaps disappoint. But Avatarium's mastery remains total, elaborating each track like a piece of goldsmith. In doing so, they stand more than ever as the architects of a singular edifice where the woody softness is combined with the telluric heaviness, the ethereal light with the darkness of the abyss. - Official website

AVATARIUM

DEATH WHERE IS YOUR STING

AFM RECORDS

HARD ROCK