Моя игра

I don’t know precisely what ‘game’ AnDem lay claim to as ‘theirs’ – apart from rock ‘n’ roll, as in the lyrics – but this album proves that whatever they’re playing, they’re having a good time playing it and can play it well. My Game is damn fine music, and it’s clear to any that will listen that our stalwart angelic-demonic commander Serge Polunin hasn’t lost his songwriting touch. More importantly: it’s clear that he and Christine had lots of fun performing it. This album is up in the same inspired epic tier of sympho-speed that Daughter of the Moonlight was, and that’s high praise from me.

Unfortunately, to the naked eye, My Game looks, to put it politely, low-rent. The cover art did not inspire any high hopes in me: it’s literally a sketchbook draught of an N64-era CG rendering of an eviscerated human heart… and the track time is only slightly longer than the EP Eternity. But actually putting this thing on will teach a bloke in a hurry not to judge an album by its cover. Serge and Christine (along with session bassist Artem Freerider) pack quite a punch into these 34 minutes.

My Game starts off strong and keeps on going strong. They pump us up with a nice slab of quasi-cinematic power metal bombast in ‘Non confractus nobis’, synths nicely underpinning the thing to lend the needed atmosphere, before Christine Lyubovskaya (née Fedorishchenko) launches us credibly into the delightfully bouncy ‘Don’t Lose Faith in Your Heart’. (Wait, what’s that? A positive, upbeat song title for a high-energy power metal song? With a guitar solo? Thanks be to God—AnDem have left their mopey emo sad-sack days of Winter Tears long behind them! The moonlit rebel daughter is back, once and for all!)

In fact, there are quite a few moments that remind one quite pleasantly of Daughter of the Moonlight, not least the direct lyrical callback to that album in ‘Luna’. ‘My Land’, for example, has the same ballsy drive and retro use of synth effects for a powerhouse kick to the nuts that ‘Road to Pandemonium’ delivered on Daughter. ‘Into the Void’ features a warbling melodic hook that directly recalls the actual song ‘Daughter of the Moonlight’, and ‘Oasis’ has a similar speedy kick to ‘Keeper of the Sword’. And then there’s the re-record of ‘I See the Eyes’, nicely touched up and given a darker, heavier power metal treatment. With these high points of reference, the praise I’m giving to this album is nowhere close to idle.

There are a couple of songs on which Juliana Savchenko’s throat-slashing Anne Boleyn act from albums bygone is noticeably absent, and missed. One can’t help but wonder how the gutsy Sister Sin biker-rockish ‘My Game’ would have sounded with Julie flying the front of the formation, for example. But just as I don’t really begrudge Nightwish the loss of Turunen, neither do I really begrudge AnDem the loss of Savchenko. Christine Lyubovskaya brings more than her fair share of her own charm and grace to the album, on tracks like ‘Luna’ and especially ‘Oasis’: a song which really tests her range in both direction, and allows her to really dig her pipes into a smoky boozy contralto and let rip with some aggression further up her natural range.

The quality of the music on My Game is easily in the same tier as the high points of AnDem’s career. Even if ‘Don’t Forget’ doesn’t quite jerk the tears in the same way that ‘Prayer’ did from Daughter, there’s also no foot-dragging ‘Goths Go to Rome’ to bring the album down anywhere. My Game keeps it powerful, punchy, and most of all fun. Daughter of the Moonlight still edges out My Game in terms of my own personal preference, but that’s partly because I’ve been spinning it around longer.

18 / 20