Avantasia - Ghostlights

Published February 03 2016

*=Staff's pick	Mystery Of A Blood Red Rose Let The Storm Descend Upon You The Haunting* Seduction Of Decay Ghostlights* Draconian Love Master Of The Pendulum* Isle Of Evermore Babylon Vampires* Lucifer Unchain The Light A Restless Heart And Obsidian Skies

Genre	Heavy/Power Metal/Hard Rock	Tobias Sammet	Vocals
Tracks	12	Sascha Paeth	Guitar
Running time	71 Min.	Bruce Kulick	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	Oliver Hartmann	Guitar
Release	January 29, 2016	S. Paeth/T. Sammet	Bass
Country	Germany	Felix Bohnke	Drums
Producer	Sascha Paeth	Michael Rodenberg	Keyboard
Similar artists	---

Additional vocals by Jorn Lande, Ronnie Atkins, Robert Mason, Dee Snider, Geoff Tate, Michael Kiske, Herbie Langhans, Marco Hietala, Sharon Den Adel and Bob Catley. Additional keyboards by Sascha Paeth and Tobias Sammet.

Personally I'm hardly ever interested in the exact meaning of a band's lyrics, so I just choose to take notice of that this is the second part of the story that began on the previous record The Mystery Of Time. This is the 7th album that goes under the epithet Avantasia and at this point it's safe to say that Tobias Sammet during the last 8-9 years definitely puts just as much time on this ambitious project as he does with his main band Edguy.

Ghostlights is a really varied record, with a lot of different kinds of songs. It comprises rock songs, heavy and slower stuff, ballads, power metal and heavy metal tracks and the performance is sometimes epic and on other occasions uncomplicated and direct. Tobias has never been a stranger for development, yet the things presented on this piece of work mostly follow the trace of his latest albums and this time he generally takes his music a couple of steps sideways. As usual Tobias has been able to gather a talented lineup of singers and with this ensemble on board he definitely has the competence to put the right singer to the right song and make them do what they do best.

Sometimes I live a little bit in the past, not unlike many other music fans too, because to me Avantasia was chiefly a bombastic power metal experience when Tobias during 2001 released this project's inaugural effort The Metal Opera and therefore in some way it becomes natural to me that the power metal songs and the tracks with speed and grandeur combined also are the ones that appeal to me the most. The quiet songs, like the ballads, I think don't have enough guts and they sort of become lullabies and occasionally I feel that the rock songs turn out too brisk to suit my requirements.

This album pretty much has it all but really awesome songs. It has the diversity, the great vocals, many good melodies, a really nice mood and an atmospheric direction, yet the songs are still unable to convince me of this album's supposed greatness. It reaches the point of being good all the time, but I never get impressed by the overall song material and no matter how many times I listen to this album, it stays on the same level.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	5	7	8	5

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe