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Symphonity > Voice from the Silence > Reviews > hells_unicorn
Symphonity - Voice from the Silence

Another day, another symphony. - 80%

hells_unicorn, April 25th, 2011

The demise of bands are usually marked by greater interest in other projects, and the 2008 double shot of Saint Deamon and Symphonity is among the more blatant examples of an older project being jettisoned with little regard for subtlety. To be fair, Dionysus was not the pinnacle of Olaf Hayer’s career, but it did display his versatility as a vocalist in spite of being derivative and, at times, stylistically muddled. Symphonity, which is in itself a musical continuation of the rest of the band’s former project Nemesis, is much more stylistically consistent and in line with the neo-classical tendencies of Olaf’s other major works with Luca Turilli and Dushan Petrossi. In essence, the odd middle ground that was Dionysus stylistically split perfectly in half, and in Saint Deamon every modern and progressive idea went, leaving what the former probably should have been more geared towards to begin with.

But all of the intricate reflection on power metal lineup musical chairs aside, Symphonity may as well simply be Nemesis with a different singer, thus it sounds heavily similar to an Iron Mask album albeit without as much overt Malmsteen worship. “Voice From The Silence” offers up a continuous array of catchy, over-the-top, cliché melodic metal at fast tempos that any Stratovarius fanatic will be sure to gobble up in the spriteliest of fashions. These are the sort of songs that are really easy to get into yet pretty hard to get out of, offering up standard formulaic songwriting and familiar themes of esoteric love and fantasy. The album art is actually about as lofty and light as the recent output by Timo Tolkki with his new project Symfonia (note the similar sounding name), though the contents are a bit more aggressive.

The album kicks off in typical orthodox neo-classical fashion, with an instrumental intro that draws influences heavily from Angra and Arwen, themselves taking their cues from Rhapsody (Of Fire), which functions as a segue into an even more typical first full length song. “Give Me Your Helping Hand” reminds of a number of songs put out between 1995 and 2006 that were themselves types of Malmsteen’s “I’ll See The Light Tonight”. The presentation here is comparable to many other bands, but the arrangement of keyboards and baroque tonality definitely draws heavy similarities to “King Of The Nordic Twilight”. All of what is going on here is noteworthy for how utterly predictable and tried and true it is, yet is very entertaining and of a high caliber. It is literally impossible to accuse this band of being yet another fold of amateur trend hoppers, as the presentation is up to the caliber of a group of seasoned veterans, and a little research will reveal that all involved are such.

There are a few spots that are brighter than others, but largely this is a consistent, straight lined album where experiments are mercifully few in number. The ambitious 3 part title song set “The Silent” shows a small amount of variation into piano ballad territory, followed by a slow trudging epic in “In Silence Forsaken”, which is a slightly more riff happy answer to a number of slower Timo Tolkki creations such as “Eternity” and “Soul Of A Vagabond”. The high speed glory ride “Evening Star” turns the clock back to when songs were fast and triumphant, particularly in the Freedom Call and Narnia variety which is not as widely heard of today. The band even makes a little time to revisit the slower, anthem style occasionally employed by the now defunct Hayer project Dionysus in the form of a hidden song found after a brief instrumental ditty in “Afterlife”.

While definitely much more cliché than the darker, leaner approach of Saint Deamon, Olaf has staked his claim to an equally viable band here that can rival his former Swedish compatriots on stage. This is the sort of album that is pretty safe to like if you’re into the style, but doesn’t really cross over into something utterly captivating like “Visions” or “King Of Nordic Twilight”. Whoever hears this will definitely get what they pay for, though given the large number of similar sounding bands, this falls just a bit shy of being something to sell all your worldly possessions in order to obtain.