That was until "The Last Knight" came out, which finally turned the tide. For the first time, I listened to the record start to finish and loved what I was hearing. There were the obvious standouts as always, but the rest of the album finally lived up to that standard. Serenity had done it, they had won me over...
And this record is being branded as a 'new era', already. Sigh.
That might be best embodied by the fact the band now features Marco from Temperance on guitar and backing vocals, who just so happened to be Georg's compatriot in Fallen Sanctuary. Now that they're working together in two bands, it really feels like there is no such thing as a band identity anymore, and music is just one mass of notes that gets divided up in random ways. That's not to speak ill of Marco, since I like Temperance, and I actually liked Fallen Sanctuary quite a bit too, but the music of all these groups is starting to self-cannibalize. That definitely kills some of my interest, if I'm being honest.
So does the subject matter. Apparently based on the life and work of a Renaissance painter, yet more talk about knights and crusades doesn't give me much to grasp onto. I don't have any delusions about being a sword-swinging warrior fighting against some vague evil, so these stories have almost no ability to resonate with my life or emotional state. They don't need to in order to be good songs, but if I'm trying to form a relationship with a new set of songs, being able to hear something I can use in my own life makes a huge difference. Without that connection, these are just melodies, and they have to be even better to make the same kind of impact.
That's what "The Last Knight" was able to do, since it suffered from the same issue regarding its subject matter. Those songs were packed with mammoth hooks, while this record is more restrained in that department. That might seem odd, since we see a renewed emphasis on symphonic elements here, but the bigger scope and sound actually works against the songs themselves. There is less room for the guitars to sound powerful, and vocal lines written with string accompaniment in mind don't have the same bounce and stickiness. At least that's how this comes across to me.
That being said, this record is still good. The odd thing is that it feels back-loaded, where the second half features songs like "Nemesis" and "The End Of Babylon", which deliver on Serenity's penchant for big hooks and sweeping melodies. Whatever my reservations are, when the band gives us songs like that, I'm fully on board. I don't think it's a coincidence that the latter song, which might just be my favorite on the record, also has less emphasis on the string arrangements than most of the others.
By the time the album is closing, I've come around on this being a worthy follow-up to "The Last Knight", even if I can't say it gets quite as far. The opening stretch of the album is a slow start, and I wonder how many people might hear those first few songs and tune out. That would be a shame, since the best songs are still to come.
As I was saying before, this isn't a record I'm even going to feel passionately about, given that I don't see how I can possibly connect it to my own life. That being said, it's a good record, even if Serenity, Temperance, and Fallen Sanctuary are drawing too much from the same well. For those who like all of that, this will be another obvious winner. I'm happy to say this is actually a positive surprise, given my doubts Sanctuary could strike gold again. It's nice to have expectations exceeded for once. There's been far too much of it going the other way.
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