SERIOUS BUT LIGHTHEARTED AND GROOVY // Avantasia - The Raven Child // Composer Reaction & Analysis
Вставка
- Опубліковано 31 січ 2025
- Bryan reacts to and talks about his thoughts on AVANTASIA - The Raven Child (OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO)
ORIGINAL VIDEO // • AVANTASIA - The Raven ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOTE ON UPCOMING THEMES AND SONGS // www.patreon.com...
SPECIAL SELECTION REQUEST // www.paypal.com...
OR // ko-fi.com/crit...
LINKTREE // linktr.ee/crit...
Contains links for Special Selection submissions, the CR Patreon, access to the CR Discord Server, the CR Mastodon profile, and more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
01:31 Reaction
13:03 Analysis - Symphonic Heavy Metal?
16:30 Analysis - Utilizing A Wider Instrumentation
22:08 Analysis - The Metal-ier Side
25:05 Analysis - Fantastic Vocal Work
29:31 Analysis - Themes, Motifs, and Flow
33:33 Analysis - Lyrical Dive
37:40 Outro
#reaction #avantasia #symphonicmetal #powermetal
Did anyone else hear 'Carry on my wayward son' within this song? @8:19 - Dio meets Kansas meets Iron Maiden
Tobias Sammet is a great fan of Kansas (and of the classic rock/prog rock scene in general), so it could be. Spectres is also heavily influenced by the same Carry On My Wayward Son.
Thank you yet again for your thoughts. Genre-wise, all I can tell you further is that this project was founded by Tobias Sammet of Edguy (Power/Heavy/somehow even Glam Metal) with the goal to create a (Power) Metal Opera. On the later albums, Avantasia shifted a bit towards more classic hard rock / heavy metal elements (at least to my ears). So to me, its a little genre, a niche of its own. ^^
For my 'trained ears' it's unbelievable that one can't easily distinguish between the 3 singers, I'll give you their starting time stamps 😂:
Hansi Kürsch 1:36, Tobias Sammet 1:55 / 4:06, Jørn Lande 5:56.
Speaking of Jørn, he once called himself/was called a 'disciple of Dio', so your observation was a good one. He is a vocal power house, I love the way his vocals work together with Tobias vocals (on here kinda the last 3 minutes). There's a reason for Jørn beeing a long time guest for Avantasia.
Have a good day, at last my coffee is brewed and I feel the need to absorb its pure darkness with the light of my soul. ;)
Thanks for the timestamps. That helped a lot and allowed me to find some qualities that I could identify them with.
The songwriter and the main singer of this band, Tobias Sammet is absolutely amazing! When you dig through more Avantasia-songs you will discover it as well.
Here are some of my favorite epics: (all of them kinda long)
Journey To Arcadia
Runaway Train
A Restless Heart And Obsidian Skies
The Seven Angels
The Great Mystery
The Scarecrow
Ghost In The Moon
Let The Storm Descend Upon You
Misplaced Among The Angels
The Wicked Symphony
Just a couple of absolute epics!
You should definitely check out another track by Avantasia called "Let The Storm Descend Upon You"
Good shout on the Jorn-Dio comparison. After Dio died Heaven & Hell held one final concert in tribute to their late singer, with Jorn stepping in as vocalist alongside Glenn Hughes.
I actually googled this, the term "riff" comes from 1920s musical slang, and is likely a shortened or altered version of refrain.
Tobi is an incredible songwriter and yes Brian, Jorn purposefully mimics Dio. He may Dio's fan. Check out his tribute to Dio he did...Jorn - Song for Ronnie James.
My first exposure to this band- Will have to dig deeper.
Much of the genre stylings here aren't normally in my wheelhouse but collectively compelling & "lick"-able😉.
Thanks for the reaction and to whoever recommended it.
Moonglow is one of my favourite albums of all time, I'm sure you'll have a great time
Everytime, have fun ^^
Try The Scarecrow
Awesome video btw 👍🏻👍🏻
You said it sounds kind of hair metal at one point. Tobias' original group Edguy was absolutely hair metal! Rock on 🤘🤘🤘
Great reaction! If you like that, then you will love this one, as mentioned below, Let The Storm Descend Upon You. It is epic aswell. There are a number of shorter songs or singles with videos to choose from, too. Such as The Moon Flower Society and Carry me Over, plus many more!
Avantasia's got some of the best voices in the European power/heavy metal realm, much like Ayreon. In fact, some of them overlap across both projects. Sadly I soon grew extremely tired of Tobias Sammet's love for elongated, ultravibrato'ed ending of phrases. It gets really tiring after a while, but he's a great composer, that's for sure. I still think the first 2 Avantasia acts are the best.
Jorn on the other hand... Oh man, he's a beast. You might have heard of him in other bands like Ark (both of their albums are a must for prog metal fans), Masterplan or Pentakill, the LoL-inspired virtual group.
Anyway, this was a nice throwback to my power metal days. And great reaction as usual. Keep it ip, Bryan!
Never got around to Avantasia when I was exploring power metal. Definitely enjoyed this though, perhaps because it's been a long time since I've heard any power metal and I've always enjoyed the genre for its melodicism. This was definitely a superb example of the genre and has me interested in hearing more if the rest of their work is up to this level.
Power metal and symphonic metal are technically separate genres but they tend to be conjoined more often than not. Originally, power metal was basically a combination of Judas Priest/Iron Maiden-style melodic heavy metal and thrash. If you listen to Helloween's Walls of Jericho EP and then something off their Keeper of the Seven Keys you can hear how they essentially moved from thrash to a much more heavily melodic thrashy style. Symphonic metal came later and its major innovation was the orchestral textures it added (especially the synth strings). You could technically put those symphonic elements to any metal genre, but I think power metal was always a perfect fit for the symphonic elements because of how much it leaned into soaring melodies. If anything, symphonic metal did tend to dial back the speed/thrash elements of early power metal, but even most of the early power metal bands like Helloween dialed back the speed/thrashy elements as they went along.
Avantasia's genre is weird. The first two albums are indisputably symphonic power metal, however starting with The Scarecrow, Tobi persued a sound more like this one. Generally, the community still call Avantasia a power metal band for simplicity's sake but that isn't entirely accurate anymore. While there are still metal riffs in some songs it's debatable whether Avantasia is even really a metal band anymore. The album The Mystery of Time is even subtitled 'A Rock Epic'
I wouldn't say power metal is simply symphonic heavy metal, while a lot of power metal does use symphonic elements, it's better characterised by the speed and soaring uplifting melodies. Raven Child is melodic, but the melodies aren't quite right for a power metal track. There also isn't the speed and powering double kick to cement it as a power metal song. Check out Requiem for a Dream from the same album for a more pure power metal comparison.
Avantasia's sound sort of exists as it's own thing in my mind as it incorporates so many subgenres and overall sounds very much like its own thing.
They are impossible to pin down in a single genre. You will find a mix of pop, rock, 80s metal, modern power metal, symphonic metal, power ballads etc all on a their recent stuff. You need to hear like 5 songs to get an accurate idea of what they are, since they are so varied. But it's almost all great stuff. I can do without Kiske's vocals when they pop up, but there are numerous tracks where is not really present or highlighted. My "core" Avantasia playlist has more songs than any other band, and their diversity of sounds and singers ensures endless replayability IMO.
Earlier Avantasia is definiteley power metal and then it devleoped a bit away from that to become more bombastic, symphonic
Love this band but, at least for me, their albums are exhausting to listen though. There is just always so much going on haha.