The Waking Hour

Age Of Artemis has had the rather curious disposition of being stylistically mislabeled, being billed as a melodic power metal act, which conjures up instant comparisons to the likes of Dreamtale, early Sonata Arctica and a number of other bands touting a latter 1990s Stratovarius sound. Upon first hearing this band's highly competent debut Overcoming Limits, something more along the lines of an elaborate, almost to the point of being progressive, take on a symphonic outfit such as Dark Moor or Rhapsody Of Fire came into the picture, albeit with a somewhat more restrained orchestral presence and more of a conservative, Helloween oriented execution. Suffice to say, this approach worked very well for the band and found them in the much coveted territory of being a younger band that could trade blows with the likes of fellow Brazilian power house Angra. Ironically enough, it would be in the act of trying to move further in the direction of said band that Age Of Artemis would fail to recapture the magic of 2 years prior on their sophomore effort.

To put it bluntly, The Waking Hour is a confused album that tries way too hard to be too many different things, few of them bearing any resemblance to where this band had been before. It gets pretty hard to avoid feeling a sense of incredulity when the meandering acoustic rock intro "Penance" comes in with an abundance of background noises and little resemblance to the soaring Neo-classicism of before. When things actually get going on "Under The Sign", it's pretty clear that the band was aiming for something along the lines of where Angra went on Holy Land, but minus the mystique and speed. Granted, this song is among the better ones on here and manages to make a decent show of mixing off-the-cuff progressive grooves, fancy technical guitar and bass work, and ethnic percussion sounds, but the chorus is so blatantly AOR sounding and fluffy that everything else ends up feeling a bit forced. Alírio Netto's vocals are generally a consistent mixture of screechy crests and semi-gravely troughs that tends to go with an Andre Matos emulation, though he goes a bit overboard on the rougher edged yells at times and gets quasi-comical in the process.

As things go along, the album rides an upbeat wave of progressive and rock oriented ideas meshed in with a slightly triumphant but never quite spellbinding air to it, but the waves ends up tapering off rather than coming to a climactic crash. The next couple of songs in "Broken Bridges" and "The Waking Hour" have a few interesting elements, but largely hit territory comparable to "Under The Sign" and come off as slightly less potent versions of the same mishmash of mid-tempo and occasionally faster ideas. A few other songs are reasonably animated but also a bit schizophrenic, such as the tech. happy yet meandering "Melted In Charisma" which has lots of interesting instrumental sections, but sort of falls back into a groovy AOR mode similar to recent Edguy output once the vocals enter. There are a couple of throwaway ballads that are more filler than anything else, a longer and even sappier version of the same formula heard on the opening full length song in "Childhood", and not really much of anything that truly sticks to one's memory. The only time when things show any signs of reverting back to a winning, power metal oriented formula is on "New Revolution", which actually succeeds in capturing that happy medium between progressive noodling and strong songwriting often heard out of Angra, definitely the shining moment on an otherwise lackluster album.

Believing in first impressions can often lead one to dismiss a lot of bands that may come to prove their salt as they mature. In a somewhat similar sense, putting too much stock in a second studio outing can also be a bit deceptive given that some bands will feel pressured to evolve too quickly in order to not be put into a box, and that looks to be what happened here. But the motives behind the shift in style that occurred for Age Of Artemis between 2012 and now not withstanding, this was not a worthwhile effort. One could maybe give this a tepid nod of approval for showcasing the individual band members' prowess at their instruments, but virtuosity alone is not a substitute for good songwriting, which is where The Waking Hour really misses the boat. Hopefully when this band gives the studio a 3rd run they'll scale back the progressiveness a bit and focus on putting together an album that slays the same way their debut did, or at the very least, present something a bit more digestible.