Album Review: Marius Danielson - Legend Of Valley Doom Pt II

I think I've made this point often enough, but I'll say it once again; I'm tired of these 'jukebox albums', as I call them. A songwriter gets together a host of singers to play the parts in a concept album that no one will ever care about the story of, and the names of the guests are used to sell what would be music from a band that would largely go ignored. Avantasia is about the only one of these projects that has ever been great, which is why it has endured, and that's because Tobias Sammet is able to serve as the fulcrum around which everything orbits. Albums like the first "Legend Of Valley Doom" didn't have that luxury, and instead sounded like a collection of different metal bands all on the same album. It was a decent record, but I find it hard to get excited to listen to that many different voices one after the next.

So now we're back with the second installment in the series(?), which will continue telling a story I cannot claim to know the first thing about. From the song titles, it is clearly about knights and battle, but here's the thing; telling a narrative in lyrics is much harder than most songwriters ever expect. Moving a plot along and developing characters simply doesn't work very often in the confines of the limited number of words a song contains. And when you do try to put the plot first, the words become stilted and awkward. That's why concept records tend to exist only in the mind of the people who write them.

In a strange turn, the album opens with a hymn, a slow ballad that does anything but get the blood pumping. Starting out with the death of a character is an interesting way of jumping into the story, but it doesn't help the album out. That is still the point, making an album, right?

After one up-tempo power metal number, we get sent straight into another slow piano dirge. The pacing of this record is abysmal. Perhaps it would work in the context of putting the two records together, serving as a bit of an intermission, but judging this record on its own, those tracks, and how those interludes are followed with yet another ballad, makes it a chore to stay interested enough to make it to the meat of the album.

Once we get to that portion, we are treated to more of the same well done but extremely generic power metal that the first record gave us. If you like the stereotype of power metal, you'll be happy with these songs. They follow the old Helloween school of power metal like a child traces a drawing to learn their motor skills. It doesn't help that much of the vocal cast resides in the same timbre, so telling them apart and trying to figure out what is going on is exceptionally difficult. Blaze Bayley stands out, but he's the only one. Records like this show how a genre establishes a certain template, and it either attracts singers who already sound that way, or vocalists alter their voices to fit the standard. It's a phenomenon I've long wondered about.

Really, the album is something that will depend entirely on how you feel about the cliches it relies on. If you like power metal (I do) and fantasy literature (I don't), you might find this enjoyable. Since I don't care in the slightest about whether the mead-drinkers of Valley Doom get stepped on by a dragon or not, I'm probably missing out on a large part of the appeal. I can judge the record only as a piece of music, and on that level it doesn't work for me. The metal here is recycled power metal, but there isn't even much of it to listen to. This record is dragged down with copious narration and balladry, which is just too much. And I say that as a sucker for ballads.

The first "Valley Doom" record was a decent attempt to jump in on one of the big trends. This second chapter, though, is not the follow-up I was looking for. It's a swing and a miss.