Stephen My search for a better prog/power metal outfit last year was stumbled on this. I'm not sure I have heard their previous albums before, but based on the only information that this is a female-fronted band, I expect something great in the border of SYMPHONY X and WITHIN TEMPTATION, but how unfortunate when all I got is a mediocre symphonic metal band. Sure there are some great moments here. 'New Dawn', is the best tune, a power metal track that has commercial touch and sounds very melodic, I'm in love with this right at the first spin.

'Twist of Fate' and 'Elegy of Existence' are two nice tracks, but apart from that three strong tracks, VISION OF ATLANTIS bored me with lots of poorly written tunes, such as 'Where Daylight Falls' or 'Conquest of Others'. 'Memento' is actually pretty good, gave me a thought of a colossal musical score when I first spin it, but the 6:38 duration isn't really full with goodie and they could have shorten it couple of minutes off.

'Black River Delta' isn't bad and the ballad, 'Reflection', is also far from horrible, but with only 3 great tracks, this album was struggling to fight to the top table of any prog fans end-year list. To me, a 70% top and perhaps will go down to 65% after a while.

adg211288 Power Dive is the second album from German symphonic metal act Voices of Destiny. The style of the album more specifically draws on gothic metal and power metal within the dominantly symphonic sound, using the beauty and the beast vocal format. The album was released in 2012.

Now I consider symphonic metal to be one of my favourite styles of metal, especially the female fronted bands, but deep down I’m also highly critical of the genre, especially the female fronted bands. The reason? Repetition. There are not many bands that really manage to hold my attention now that I’ve got acquainted with a wide range of acts. In fact although I guess some may argue, I don’t think you can beat the big name acts of the style at their own game, and that’s exactly the problem with Voices of Destiny’s second album. It’s my first encounter with the band, and while I won’t go as far to say that it will be my last, the band is young and all and as they do show later in the album may have something surprising up their sleeves for the future, Power Dive isn’t an album that makes me want to revisit it in a hurry.

If you’ve heard Epica’s music then you’ll know kind of what to expect with Voices of Destiny, except what we have here comes across not so much an Epica clone act as a poor man’s version of them. The band’s best asset would have to be female vocalist Maike Holzmann, whose vocals are very typical of the style but that’s why she’s the band’s best asset. She’s just right for the style, it’s just everything else going on around her that typically lets her down badly for the majority of Power Dive. Her male counterpart Lukas Palme, who is also the keyboardist, is not a bad growler at all, but he just doesn’t put on a performance that really offsets Maike Holzmann’s vocals. The symphonic keyboards don’t really add a lot to the music either in most of the tracks. You can hear them in the background having their odd moments, but there’s no epic fusion of heavy guitar riffs and classical music and when symphonic metal fails to be epic, unless it has other redeeming features, I typically just lose interest and sadly that’s just what has happened on Power Dive. It’s not really rare for me to be a bit disappointed in symphonic metal albums due to not really bringing anything new to the table, but many of them can end up still being solid albums. It is rare however for me to be as disappointed though as I am with this one.

The reason for that is that the songs just aren’t memorable. The elements are there, but they just don’t come together. The title track in particular is just the most extremely boring symphonic metal song I think I’ve ever heard. Things pick up a bit after that, as a bit of power metal influence comes into play, but it takes until Dedication, which is the eighth of eleven tracks, until I really hear something that tells me that Voices of Destiny have potential within their field. I actually enjoyed this track a fair bit. An album that kept up this calibre may not have been groundbreaking or innovative but it at least would have been a solid addition to a symphonic metal fan’s collection. Unfortunately you probably don’t need to be told that if you have to wait until the eighth track to get a highlight then the album has serious problems.

But what’s this? That’s right after suddenly delivering the good eight tracks in Voices of Destiny surprise me and do in again straight away with Your Hands. It’s too a lesser degree certainly but after what I just about got used to pre-Dedication this is surprising to say the least. This was a reason for pointedly saying ‘mostly’ and ‘majority’ a couple of times in the earlier stages of this review. I find it totally flummoxing how an artist can get it wrong for so long during an album and then suddenly start delivering the goods this far in. Yeah you guessed it, they did it yet again with Red Winter's Snow I (Prophets Of Doom). Okay, so it still kind of suffers with the issues outlined earlier in this review but at the end of the day this is damn solid symphonic metal, and ultimately that’s all I really demand of the genre. Innovation is very nice of course, but if a symphonic metal album can be made up of solid material with an epic sound then I’ll be a happy bunny.

It just makes me want to scream at the injustice of it all. Had the whole album been of the quality they suddenly pulled out of the hat towards the end we’d have been talking a recommendable release, but ultimately all Voices of Destiny proved with Power Dive is how inconsistent they are. It didn’t help that you could break the album up into sections such as ‘Cliché Intro Track’, ‘Really Boring Track’, ‘Okay Tracks’, ‘Great Tracks’ and ‘Just as Cliché Outro Track’. Really Voices of Destiny had enough material for a decent EP here, which it may as well be with so much filler within the album in one solid block. Even one more great track could have just about pushed Power Dive into purely average territory, since Maike Holzmann really does shine vocally, but with far more average to bad stuff outweighing the good stuff, I ultimately have to consider this a below average symphonic metal release.

4.3/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven(http://metaltube.freeforums.org))

Stephen Four years in silence and they came up with this ? I can't help to say but I'm totally disappointed. Well not too much because I haven't expecting anything from that camp since Tarja left and the only thing that interest me now is Vuorinen's side project, BROTHER FIRETRIBE, but with a long tour coming ahead to support this new album, looks like there'll be no new BF album until 2013 and that just pissed me off.

I don't have any problem with Olzon's vocal like many other. I think she's okay even though I have to admit she's inferior and less powerful than Turunen, but weakness of this album is obviously on the fact that they're forcing too much to blend the album with the upcoming movie, hence making the whole sound is like a colossal movie score and not a great metal album like what they had done in the past, not to mention the painful 75-minutes duration and only half of the songs that I'm fond of.

'Storytime', the first single, is the most appealing track for me. The dark nuance made you feel like you're trapped in a wicked circus, the massive choir is awesome, I love this song. But aside from the fourth track, 'I Want My Tears Back' which is a nice commercial track with Celtic melodies, the first half was swarmed with mediocrity. 'Ghost River' has nice riffs but lack of beautiful chorus and 'Slow, Love, Slow' is contradictive to any of their style which is sounds like an old American jazz. The intro on 'Scaretale' is too long and with 'Arabesque', both will be good as score but not metal.

The second half is better. 'Turn Loose The Mermaids' is melancholic and 'Last Ride of The Day' is the classic Nightwish all over the place. The problem is in 'Song of Myself', they bored me to death after the first 3 minutes, and I can't believe I had wasted the 13-minutes of my life for it. Maybe I was expecting a contender to their classic, I'm not a hater of concept album anyway, in fact I have many albums that I love, but not this one.

As a soundtrack album, 'Imaginaerum' might do okay, but as a symphonic metal album, I'm on the other side of the river. 65% at best and I know they’re better than this!

Stephen Think of a more progressive approach of NIGHTWISH with some neoclassical elements and less speedy in rhythm, and you'll get EDENBRIDGE. 'Sunrise In Eden' marks their first step and in a glance, I didn't realize this is already 12 years old. Year 2000 isn't a bright year for non-mainstream metal, especially when alternative/nu-metal still reign the world, but EDENBRIDGE deserved an appreciation for this idealistic mission, giving something fresh for the community.

The concept is actually pretty interesting but what bugs me is the lack of strength in songwriting. When you heard NIGHTWISH or WITHIN TEMPTATION, you can always find two or three songs that strike you fast and hard in the first spin but you can't find that here. Best tracks here perhaps only the ballads 'Forever Shine On' and 'Take Me Back' with Sabine's angelic vocal, but then you started to doubt, why would a metal album's highlight are in ballads.

Because the fastest tracks here are relatively weaker. 'Cheyenne Spirit', is good but it's hard to say it's a memorable tune. 'Wings of The Wind' is complex but boring to be honest. 'Midnight At Noon' is a good and safe uptempo track. The title track started with a nice oriental intro, but the 8-minutes duration is painful as they walk with a very average tune.

Another low thing here is that 'Holy Fire' is totally a waste, chaotic track with no good melodies at all. 'My Last Step Beyond' that serves as the epic part of this album, running in 10-minutes, isn't bad, but not great enough to catapult this album to any point beyond 65%-70%.

In the end, it’s just a medicore debut, buy only if it's extremely cheap and recommended to symphonic metal enthusiast only.

Time Signature Beyond horizon...

Genre: symphonic metal

"Maria Magdalena? Ain't that a pop song?". Why yes, it is, it is a pop song from the 80s by the German singer, Sandra, and, yes, it is that exact song that this Visions of Atlantis EP is named after. And, as you have guessed, the reason is that there is a cover version of the song on the EP. Needless to say, it has been seriously metallized and now has crunchy guitars, heavy riffage and powerful drums as well as Vision of Atlantis' trademark symphonic effects. Actually, Visions of Atlantis prove that 'Maria Magdalena' sounds just as good as a 2011 symphonic metal song as it does as a 1985 pop song. One of the strengths of the pop song, which Visions of Atlantis have thankfully retained is its memorable and very catchy chorus.

The other tracks are original Vision of Atlantis compositions. The style is basically midtempo modern power metal with symphonic effects. The focus is, however, on the guitar riffage and the vocal melodies, and the symphonic effects are kept in the background, which also keeps the cheese-o-meter comfortably out of the red. 'Melancholia' and 'Change of Tides' are quite solid and catchy symphonic power metal tracks, and especially the former has some very strong vocal hooklines, and, while the tracks are not really groundbreaking or out of the ordinary, I think they are quite good. The same goes for 'Distant Shores', while 'Last Shut of your Eyes' and 'Beyond Horizon' are epic ballads which, I must admit, do not really rock my world. I mean, they are well written with lots of melody, and I am sure that fans of epic metal ballads will absolutely love them... they just do not appeal that much to me.

As has almost become a typical feature of symphonic power metal, the vocal duties are shared by a male vocalist and a female vocalist, and this combination works quite well, although I am not a fan of it per se, and - while the vocalists are incredibly skilled - I think that they lack the power to match the heaviness of the crunchy guitar riffs.

The main attraction of this release is, for my money, the cover version of 'Maria Magdalena' as well as the very strong and catchy 'Melancholia'. The remaining tracks will probably appeal mostly to people who are already fans of the band.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)

adg211288 I find that music DVD’s can be a hit or miss thing’s with fans but this one is a definite hit. If you haven’t had the chance to see Within Temptation live then this DVD captures them at their flawless best; perfect renditions of many of their best songs, spanning all four studio releases that they had at the time, great stage sets and special guests. I’ve actually seen the band while they promoted the album that they released in 2007, The Heart of Everything and in that show they mainly only played songs from said album and The Silent Force, throwing in a couple of fan favourites from Mother Earth, so The Silent Force Tour DVD makes for a great chance to see early classics such as Candles and The Other Half (of me) performed.

Clearly the band have spared no expense to make their show one to rival that of band’s said to be the some of the greatest live performers of modern times. We see a torch light procession for Candles, huge blow up creeper things to represent the power of nature during Mother Earth and lead singer Sharon den Adel suspended above the stage in a cage for Caged. Some band’s will go out of stage and just play but not Within Temptation. This is not just music, this is a show.

But first and foremost in importance is the music. Within Temptation play without fault and Sharon den Adel never misses a single note. We even get to hear the vocals of guitarist Robert Westerholt on a couple of songs, giving fans who may have only heard The Silent Force or The Heart of Everything a chance to hear Within Temptation’s earlier ‘beauty and the beast’ style of vocal delivery. Song highlights are Deceiver of Fools, Angels, Caged, Mother Earth, Candles, The Other Half (of me), Jane Doe and It’s the Fear.

Extras wise there is three music videos for the singles that came from The Silent Force (Stand My Ground, Angels, Memories) and two shorter live appearances on the first of the two discs. The extra live shows only have songs that appear in the main show and one is the same songs as the three music videos but it’s the main concert that you should be buying this for. If you’re like me you won’t be bother by that fact after you’ve watched the main show.

On the second disc you’ll find backstage footage from various places; making of documentaries for The Silent Force album and the three music videos; some interviews; a photo gallery and a bloopers/credits section. It’s not stuff that you’d probably watch more than once but I’m giving this DVD it’s rating based on the main feature. All this extra stuff is just a bonus next to that. That in itself I feel is justification for the 100% score I’m giving this DVD. If you like this band, what are you waiting for? Go buy it.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)