Ancient Bards: Discography (2010-2014) [3CD, Japanese Pressing]

×

Ancient Bards: Discography (2010-2014) [3CD, Japanese Pressing]

Close

The project, originated in the mind of Daniele Mazza, started to materialize in 2006 after Daniele met with bass player Martino Garattoni. The first stable line up was completed in 2007, with Sara Squadrani as singer, Alessandro Carichini as drummer, and Claudio Pietronik and Fabio Balducci as guitarists.

In September 2010, Alessandro left the band, to be replaced by a new drummer Federico Gatti. The latest line-up change occurred in the end of 2013 after recording the third album A New Dawn Ending, when Balducci left the band for personal reasons. Permanent replacement for Fabio has not been announced yet, but for live shows in 2014 the band has been joined by Simone Bertozzi as a guest second guitarist…

~ wiki

×

Ancient Bards: Discography (2010-2014) [3CD, Japanese Pressing]

Close

×

Ancient Bards: Discography (2010-2014) [3CD, Japanese Pressing]

Close

Power metal. The fans of the genre love it, but it doesn't always love them back. Sometime after the turn of the millennium, power metal just sort of ran out of steam. Rhapsody of Fire (then just known as Rhapsody) were riding high in the European metal scene, Blind Guardian were turning turgid Tolkien tales into metal masterpieces, and even the more fusion oriented groups like thrash/power US heavyweights Iced Earth were chomping at the bit to tear listeners a few new superfluous ear holes.

But somewhere along the way, it just kind of petered out. While some groups such as the aforementioned Blind Guardian continued to turn out relatively consistent material, other bands lost their way while still others just sank into a sea of cliches, rehashing ground already covered by their contemporaries. Iced Earth went through a carousel of line-up changes and Jon Schaffer climbing so far up his own ass he threatened to collapse into a singularity. Stratovarius was eaten alive, figuratively and almost literally, by the now washed up Timo Tolkki. Nightwish, whom I still enjoy mind you, had their mainstream breakthrough and were immediately latched onto by the obnoxious Hot Topic hordes, like an armada of lampreys with badly applied eyeliner and daddy issues guaranteeing that the band's worst songs became the most over-played. The death of Ronnie James Dio seemed symbolic of the genre's descent into a lifeless memory.

However, recent years have given power metal fans some reprieve. Stratovarius for example have reunited with a new guitarist and are turning out the best material they've written in years. DragonForce have released an album that shows them actually attempting to do something other than jam as many notes into a single bar as possible while writing lyrics about magical adventures that talk more about the geography than the actual adventures. Around the same time, a new generation of bands have entered the scene. Not without their flaws of course, and still adhering needlessly to a lot of genre cliches. But they're doing enough to shake things up and make the future of power metal a little brighter. To that effect, I give you my exhibit A: Ancient Bards.

The name of this band tells you what to expect right off the bat, though there are pleasant surprises. Before we get into that I want to address the elephant in the room. Yes, this is Italian power metal, and yes, that means the lyrics are exactly what you would expect. The keyboardist and chief songwriter Daniele Mazza admits that he doesn't actually read fantasy novels but he loves fantasy movies and video games, the Final Fantasy series in particular. This explains a lot. Ancient Bards have two albums as of writing, both furthering the story of Mazza's endearingly ambitious Black Crystal Sword Saga. Unfortunately his ambition overshoots his experience as a writer. There's nothing wrong with the song structures, rhymes, etc. It's the subject matter that's the problem. There are four benevolent kings who are the stewards of a magical super-McGuffin, the titular Black Crystal Sword, an evil wizard named Sendor is trying to get it… you know where this is going. Also, nitpicky but unless Daniele is planning to make this a story that takes place over many, many years, possibly generations, then it's not technically a saga. Yes, I know I'm being pedantic. I don't care. The stupid Twilight series has made me a little touchy about stories misusing the word "saga."

Whatever. Nobody listens to this genre for lyrical brilliance. So how's the music? I would call it epic if the word weren't so horribly abused at this point. Epic has been so thoroughly bad-touched by people who will use it to describe any song that has a piano or synth strings on it that it's starting to lose its meaning. But I digress. Ancient Bards do not hold back on the symphonic or the metal.

Early in the album with the official opening track Birth of Evil (indulgent instrumentals don't count as opening tracks as far as I'm concerned) we're introduced to one of the first surprises I talked about: bassist Martino Garattoni. It's a cliche in power metal that the bassist only needs to know what key the song is in and just play the root note really fast. Martino however is not content to play bitch to the guitarists. He holds his own in the mix despite the production trying to drown him out, pulls off a few interesting maneuvers, and even breaks out a trio of solos (Birth of Evil, Only the Brave, and Daltor the Dragonhunter). The man knows his way around six strings better than some guitarists. Yes, Martino does play a 6-string bass.

Speaking of six strings, I would be remiss not to talk about the guitars. Power metal demands a high degree of musicianship from its axe men. Claudio Pietronik and Fabio Balducci are the dynamic duo in this outfit. Though Claudio mostly handles the lead duties, Fabio isn't a slouch. The two show off a number of well-done melodic harmonies.

One highlight of Claudio's style is his use of eight-finger tapping in his solos. Right now, some of you are thinking, "Oh hell. DragonForce do that all the time and I was bored then too." Also yes, I can read your minds through the internet. But hold on just a moment. There is one huge difference separating Claudio from Herman Li: structure. Whereas many of DragonForce's solos sadly devolve into exercises of seeing how many chromatics they can squeeze into G major, Claudio's solos follow clear order and arrangements and natural progressions of a melodic theme. For him, the tapping is just a tool that allows for more articulate sonic expression.

The riffs are what you would expect from most power metal. That is to say that it's mainly a selection of straight groove chord progressions and single-note melodies. That's all well and good on its own but there isn't much variety beyond that. The aforementioned harmonies are nice but often take a back seat to those provided by the keyboards and orchestra. Segue!

Let's talk about the keyboards. Daniele Mazza is the brains behind the band and it shows. Everything is arranged like a symphony here. Densely layered orchestral arrangements are the order of the day but as I stated before, this is Italian power metal. If you expected anything different, you're either new or you haven't been paying very good attention. Nonetheless, Daniele proves himself to be more than up to the task. The melodies and arrangements are all quite beautiful and his solos are as impressive as his bandmates'. In particular, there's some very soulful piano work on Lode Al Padre.

Astute readers may have noticed that I've gone ten paragraphs without talking about the vocals. That may in part be because the way I convinced several friends to check this band out was by mentioning that in addition to a pretty face, lead vocalist Sara Squadrani also has a very impressive rack. Perhaps I'm trying to make up for my passive sexism and cavalier attitude of, "Hey, whatever gets them to check the band out in the first place." Whatever. I'll take a more proactive approach by making no further references to her physical appearance in this review. Although I have to wonder if the damage is already done and half of you have already stopped reading to go to GIS and pad your "Masturbation Material" folder… Moving on.

Miss Squadrani proves to break the mold for female metal vocalists. Rather than hiring an out-of-work opera singer with a diet consisting exclusively of cigarettes, cocaine and coffee, the band has hired on a singer whose main influence is Celine Dion. Don't hit the Back button on your browser just yet, duder. I know to some of you that might sound like a lateral move at best, but Sara has the kind of voice that was made for filling an arena. Though there's some strain on her higher end, the passion and expressiveness that this sort of music demands is there. Holy *** is it there!

I would like to make note that Sara is not exempt from the recurring trend of European vocalists who can't quite seem to shake their accents. This isn't always a bad thing, mind. It can just be a little distracting when the word used most often on this album is "sword" and she always pronounces it "serd." There are passages sung in Italian, and these work to her advantage. I don't speak a word of Italian, but I'm okay with that because when you disconnect yourself from language, the human voice is just another instrument. My own recent forays into language and world music have taught me that some languages just naturally lend themselves well to certain tones. For example, the languages of the tribes of the Iroquois nation all sound kind of badass, Suomi and Gaelic are very lyrical, and Hawaiian is probably the friendliest damn language I've ever heard. Hearing Sara singing in Italian is like someone managed to create a soundtrack to elegance, heartache, and adventure at the same time. I hear this and feel like putting on chain mail and going on a magical adventure for the king, the lands, the mountains… Just me?

I haven't said much about the drums, but unfortunately there isn't much I could say that hasn't already been said. Now-former drummer Alessandro Carichini is certainly fast behind the kit, but not especially innovative. He reminds me most of early 2000's Thomen Stauch. If you've heard Blind Guardian's A Night at the Opera, you can predict what this guy's drumming sounds like. He's adequate, but not all that remarkable. It's true what they say: finding a really good guitarist is like finding a needle in a stack of needles, but finding a really good drummer is like trying to find a sanitary surface at Dave Navarro's house. Regardless, if that style of drumming is what you're into, this won't disappoint.

The biggest downside here is once again the production. The record does show a certain lack of experience on the band's part in this department. Martino fights to stay audible in the mix as I mentioned and some of the choruses backed by a choir are so heavily produced as to make the lyrics nearly unintelligible. This also has the effect of drowning Sara in the mix and we lose the sense of a lead singer to carry the melody and inspire that sing-along feeling. This is particularly unfortunate on songs like Farewell My Hero where the verse melody is actually catchier than the chorus.

On a final note about the lyrics, the drawbacks of writing in a language that is not your first become clear the first time you hear lyrics written using modern American idiomatic speech. When you're doing a Tolkien-esque fantasy and the word "ain't" comes up, that's one of those little things that causes bigger problems for the listener. It sounds like a stupid thing to pick on, but choice of words is incredibly important in creating the write tone to a written work, especially in poetry and songwriting. I speak from experience that this is difficult to master and easy to screw up, but there are some cases where it was just really avoidable. This is one of those cases. Again, I blame this on the fact that no one in the band actually reads fantasy literature, much less in English.

Though the record has its flaws, it's a promising debut. Melodic, majestic, and magical, it's exactly the way I like my power metal. Take comfort, true metal warriors, in knowing that for every Crucible of Man or Stratovarius (the self-titled album, not the band itself) or Eternal Empire, there's a group like Ancient Bards who are willing to bring the epic.

by Steerpike, sputnikmusic.com

×

Ancient Bards: Discography (2010-2014) [3CD, Japanese Pressing]

Close

Concept albums are hardly a new idea. And the idea of a concept spanning multiple albums isn't either. Reviewing them can be a bit of a tricky affair because finding one that isn't completely ludicrous is like seeing Bigfoot: the odds are one in a million and no one will believe you anyway. Tarkus, 2112, Heart of a Killer, Tommy, all of them make sense only if you consider horse tranquilizers an entree. I say all this because I want you to know up front that the outlandishness that seems to come with the territory of all concept albums is really the only major negative you have to get past with Ancient Bards.

Following in the footsteps of Rhapsody of Fire, Ancient Bards have their own multi-album fantasy story, the Black Crystal Sword Saga. I've mentioned in a previous review that the band's lyricist (and for that matter, the entire band it turns out) loves fantasy movies and games, but doesn't actually read fantasy novels. Consequently, I don't think he realizes that the story looks like someone threw the scripts of Lord of the Rings and the last four Final Fantasy games into a food processor. In this second part of the series, we learn that the character of Dorus who started the whole quest to lead the four kings to stop the dark wizard Sendor from gaining the magical Black Crystal Sword is actually leading them into a trap because he's secretly the stillborn son of Sendor and Queen Shena who Sendor brought back to life with black magic, but couldn't give him a soul so Sendor is attempting to rejoin Dorus with his soul through the power of the sword so it turns out he was just misunderstood and- Oh hell, I can't go on! Are you actually reading this? Like I said, this is the only real hurdle you have to get past.

If you read my previous review of the band, you know that I made comments about lead vocalist Sara Squadrani's accent becoming a little distracting at points and that the production undermined some of the songwriting's strengths. I'm happy to say that neither one is nearly as much of an issue on this outing. The debut album was liked by critics and fans and moved a respectable number of copes, so it seems the band were happy to step up their game and had a bit more money to play with in the studio.

Ancient Bards are all about bombastic and majestic symphonic power metal. Though we have to sit through another indulgent symphonic opening track with spoken word narration, the official opener, To the Master of Darkness kicks off exactly the way you want it to. Sara's vocals soar through the melodies, the guitars crunch and wail, Martino's bass tone is better than ever, the arrangements are beautiful and new drummer Federico Gatti brings a power drumming approach reminiscent of Anvil's Rob Rheiner to the table with a skull crushing double kick technique.

Still, too much bombast is like too much sugar. Eventually, it's going to make you throw up. The band understand this and are able to show moments of restraint enough to give the listener time to recover. The best example here is All That Is True with its somber piano work and understated solos. The improved production is a huge help in this regard. The diversity is essential in showing that the bards are not going to fulfill the power metal cliche of only having two tempos: metal and ballad.

On a personal note I was glad to see them ditch the awful spoken word delivery of Sendor's lines from the previous album. Where before they hired a guy who sounded like a drunken uncle crossed with Andre the Giant, this time Sara sings most of Sendor's lines with the exception being in Through My Veins with guest vocalist Gian Maria Vannoni from up-and-coming Italian melo-death band Dawn Under Sun. There are a couple of passages where Sara gives a spoken word narration, and these are still weak points. Her delivery is that of a community theater Galadriel and her accent is once again front and center, proving to be a distraction at times in the way that it inadvertently calls attention to itself. Power metal bands really should learn from Rhapsody of Fire. Unless you can get Christopher Lee to be your narrator, don't write one in.

Each of the songs shows a clear evolution, never just sticking to a verse-chorus-verse-chorus formula. While the guitar work can get a little samey, this unfortunately comes with the territory of a symphonic approach. If you're not carrying the melody, you're going to be playing straight grooves. The solos are where Martino and Claudio truly strut their stuff, Claudio in particular. There's enough variety to keep the record interesting, but some songs like Valiant Ride and Soulless Child would have benefited from more hooks to keep the listener from getting lost. The balance isn't quite there yet, but the band seem to be intent on trying to find it.

All together, Soulless Child is an improvement over its predecessor and successfully avoids the sophomore slump. Despite all my bitching about the story I genuinely look forward to the next album and the next after that. If power metal fans want to see new life breathed into the genre, these are the kinds of bands they need to be supporting.

by Steerpike, sputnikmusic.com

×

Ancient Bards: Discography (2010-2014) [3CD, Japanese Pressing]

Close

Escapism is an enticing medium through which to communicate the fine art of power metal, for the two are an all too appropriate fit for each other. The lofty musical imagery implicit in the largely consonant harmonies, informed by a mixture of folk, classical and rock music influences paints a vivid picture of a place where the impossible is very much possible, but also far from free of the drama familiar to the human experience. This unique world takes on its most fantastical form when communicated through a symphonic medium, bringing a film score character to an already theatrical style, and few have a clearer command of this medium than the recent up and comers that round out the fold of Italy’s and LMP’s own Ancient Bards.

While this outfit plays a fairly young style of power metal, they can be rightly viewed as an overt throwback to a time when this particular approach was a bit more commonplace, namely the hub of the power metal revival from the late 90s through about 2003. With their third full length opus A New Dawn Ending they have reaffirmed the high speed glory ride character typified in Rhapsody Of Fire’s Symphony Of Enchanted Lands and Fairyland’s Of Wars In Osyrhia, keeping true to that age old credo of not messing with perfection. The only thing that truly separates this album from its two predecessors is an even greater degree of grace, beauty, and riveting melodies.

For those unfamiliar with this band’s craft at this juncture, the presentation places a heavy emphasis on speed, virtuosic instrumental performances, but also a very clear sense of structure and symmetrical songwriting that is easy to grasp. This approach comes in a variety of lengths from one package to the next, though they really shine the brightest in their version of a mid-length song, usually falling somewhere between five and eight minutes long, where their catchy melodies make just enough time for this band’s various soloists to steal the show for a minute or two without getting overly adventurous in all instrumental territory. Curiously enough, in contrast to many of their professed influences, their strongest soloist proves to be bassist Martino Garattoni, who rivals Joey Demaio and John Myung with his fret tapping happy chops, though the lead guitarist and keyboardist also do a seminal job at emulating a Turilli vs. Staropoli exchange.

Typically a band of this sort requires a commanding lead vocal personality in order to hold all the moving parts together, and a truly masterful presence is accomplished yet again by Sara Squadrani. Capable of both a crooning lullaby character and a triumphant operatic soprano, she presents a sound not all that far from the likes of Simone Simmons or Sharon Den Adel, but her presence amid a band that’s far more fast and aggressive than the typical Gothic tinged outfit makes for a truly unique flavor that truly stands out. While song for song this album tends to thrive in shorter territory, the two massive epic compositions “Showdown” and “A New Dawn Ending” see Sara at her best, recounting the conceptual lyrical content with a performance genuine enough to pass for a literal first person account, though additional props should be given for her brilliant duet with Fabio Lione on “The Last Resort”, which ironically presents a slightly more groove oriented character of song than what has been heard out of this outfit before, yet works just as well as their traditional speed fests.

There isn’t a dull moment to be had with this album, just as was the case a few years prior when both The Alliance Of The Kings and Soulless Child first put Ancient Bards on the map as a new, formidable force in a style that was seeing some decline given the long absence of Elise Martin from the scene and a series of long studio respites by Kerion, Rhapsody Of Fire and Fairyland. It’s still a bit early in the year but this truly has the potential to walk away with best album of 2014 according to the author of this review. To all the Tolkien and D&D obsessed metal heads out there, come all ye to with sword and shield in hand, and let us quest once again.

~ metal-observer.com