Army of Dreamers

I don’t know why I keep subjecting myself to these Frontiers projects expecting them to sound any different from the last, but I like to keep up with what’s going on in the power metal world, and I sort of liked the idea of Russell Allen pairing up with Anette Olzon. I would’ve preferred her to go head to head with someone like Timo Kotipelto, but Allen obviously has a history doing this stuff with Frontiers. Two powerhouse vocalists battling it out was certainly a novel idea when the first bunch of Allen/Lande albums came out, but we’ve had a slew of them since, from Kiske/Somerville to Lione/Conti and while I guess they are cool for what they are, they never rise above their stations.

‘Army Of Dreamers’ is the second installment from Allen/Olzon and is packed to the brim with glossy, commercial symphonic metal tunes that basically sounds like Delain with a bit of Symphony X riffing. Funny that it doesn’t sound like Nightwish at all, but Olzon did her best work outside that band, anyway. She sleepwalks her way through this unlike the two albums she did with The Dark Element, far more interesting articles for sure. These tunes function like this: Russell sings over the heavy riffs; Anette does the poppy symphonic stuff. Sometimes they sing in unison and their voices fit perfectly fine. Allen actually sings quite cleanly on this and that’s a pleasant change from his usual rasping style. Anette sounds okay, and makes the choruses work as best she can. The instrumentation is obviously geared more towards pop-focused melodies and the heavy parts vary between the type of stuff Within Temptation started doing after ‘Mother Earth’ and trickier bits that are far more satisfying. A lot of the cool metal stuff happens when Magnus Karlsson rips out a solo, but there are tunes here that do make the concept work. It begins and ends with the strongest cuts. The opening title track has a propulsive power metal riff and a sturdy chorus finding both singers in fine voice, and closer ‘Never Too Late’ is more progressive, jammed with surprising changes and another strong chorus. The rest is disposable. Too many songs like ‘All Alone’ and ‘Carved Into Stone’ do nothing interesting at all. Just old Delain hitting the snooze button. ‘Are We Really Strangers’ makes good use of some 80s Battle Beast synths that change things up a bit, I guess. The problem, really, is that if these musicians had worked all this out in a rehearsal room as a band, instead of just sending files to each other, if they actually interacted with each other in person at all, this probably would've been a much deeper effort, but that's not the case. This is product, not art.

If you’re into bands like Beyond The Black, Follow The Cipher, Metalite, and the like, you’ll get your money’s worth here. I’m sure Frontiers could come up with some more interesting pairings, though. Karevik/Simons? I could see that happening. But it would probably sound as dull as this anyway.