Album Review: Timo Tolkki's Avalon - Return To Eden

The comparisons between this project and Avantasia are too many to ignore. You have a power metal band leader who wanted the credit and/or the freedom of breaking away from their original group, you have names that share the same first syllable, and you have a concept album cycle where each record brings in a different cast of vocalists to make everything sound more grandiose and important than another record from the starting point would have generated. Of course, in Tolkki's case, he's doing this because he burned the bridges with everyone who's worked with him before, and his reputation is one that practically requires him working on his own. Still, part of me thinks about this and considers Avalon to be a pale imitation, if not a complete rip-off, of Avantasia.

With the first two Avalon records, Tolkki produced one great song that I still remember, which happened to be the very first one released. "Enshrined In My Memory" was fantastic, and it's funny now to see how much bigger Elize Ryd and her band have gotten, when compared to where Tolkki is. In the Alanis Morrisette sense of the word, isn't it ironic?

For this chapter of Avalon, you need to be deep in the power metal weeds to know the full cast. Of course Anneke Van Giersbergen needs no introduction, but the profiles of Zachary Stevens, Todd Michael Hall, Mariangela Demurtas, and Eduard Hovinga are not going to get anyone but the most hardcore excited. The same can be said of Tolkki, at this point, so maybe it's more fitting than I initially thought. Tolkki shredded his own reputation with the questionable choices he made in his last years leading Stratovarius, and further diminished when that band rebounded without him. On his own, he hasn't made any music approaching his former stature, so I'm afraid he's still treated as a curiosity.

"Promises" gets things started with some generic power metal. We get the fast keyboard runs to kick off the song, and then Hall is led into melodies that are trite, and fit that "Eagle Fly Free" mold that power metal hasn't been able to break out of for nearly thirty years. It's fine, but incredibly bland, and Hall's voice doesn't have the personality to give such a cliche song a character of its own.

The title track improves things, both by replacing the standard keyboard sounds with bagpipes, and with the interplay between the singers. Trading lines back and forth, even if they're not the strongest material, gives the song some give-and-take. Of course, after the solo, there's one section where Stevens' voice has so much echo on it I swear it had to be a production mistake. But that couldn't be, could it? Surely, someone listened to this more than once before signing off on the final mix, so why that effect was chosen is beyond me. Tolkki must have no idea what to do with a voice that isn't ear-piercing, since Stevens' solo outing finds him mixed further back than any of the other singers. If Tolkki was going to bury him, why even put the guy on the record? Maybe he's the only other one willing to return his phone calls.

The best song on the record is easily "Hear My Call", which lets Anneke have the stage all to herself. It still isn't top-tier Tolkki material, but it's the closest he comes. A bit slower, Anneke has enough room to let her voice float above the music, and that tempo also lets the hook dig in, rather than skid off the listener's ears because it's moving by too fast.

The most frustrating thing about this record is the mediocrity of it. Most of the songs are just fine, but when you go through the trouble of bringing these singers in, and your aim is to make something epic, that's not enough. If this was Tolkki's attempt at starting a new band, and there was one voice he was still learning the ropes with, I could see it being a decent starting point. But this is him picking and choosing who he wants to work with for every song, which leads me to believe he considers this material as good as it gets. He's never going to create chemistry with his singers this way, and any future Avalon records are going to suffer the same fate of ill-fitting choices.

So if you're a power metal junkie who can't get enough, sure, check out this one. It'll satisfy those people who happily consume as much power metal as the scene will create. For the rest of us, you can skip everything other than Anneke's songs. The rest of this album is indeed what I thought all along; a second rate copy of Avantasia.