Avoral
The War is not Over

The war is not over, or so claims Italian quintet Avoral as a title for their debut album. What war to they mean? Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, The heretics towards Muhammed and Islam, IS’s brutal slaying of people in Iraq and Syria? Perhaps the Second World War? The Falklands war? The war on the beavers? The war on Wolves? There are many wars now and in humanity’s history and I doubt there will be a time in the foreseeable future when man isn’t killing one another over trivialities like religious beliefs or money. Man is probably the dumbest animal alive, well Homo Sapiens is, just so no woman thinks they are excluded. But what about Avoral? They seem fascinated by wars and ivory towers and this is their debut album following touring with some known names like Furor Gallico, Dark Moor, Haggard, etc.

Their music is described as epic power metal and contains bagpipes, whistles, cello and violin to spice up the show. They even use a growler to evilise the thing in their music, music that isn’t much adrift from the main shipping lines in this genre; it is all quite typical from the instrumentation, song structures, and production. The vocals however are not, they are terrific… no that’s not the word: terrible is what I meant. In fact they are so bad that they take away the focus from the music. Music that consist of seven tracks and 40 minutes of music with the usual variation of the genre, not much in terms of fresh ideas in that regard.

It is not really the lack of fresh thinking that turns the experience of listening to this album sour, it is the vocals that may be one of the worst vocal performances I have ever heard and that turns this album into possibly the worst album I have ever heard in this genre. One has to wonder; didn’t they listen to the album before releasing it? Is there no quality control on the label’s side before releasing an album to the world? I have no quarrel with Frank, the vocalist, he may be an excellent musician and songwriter but his voice is just terrible and even though I dislike writing such things about any person or band but in this case it is what I hear and that is what I should write. Unfortunately I think Avoral does not live up to their potential mainly because of a poor vocal performance but also due to an incoherent album in general.

The best track is the instrumental one called Dark Caves Melody that is good not only because I don’t have to listen to the singing but also because it is a good track that showcases some of the potential that this band has. Now, I may be a bit hard mainly on Frank and he or his fans may hate me a bit but I am not alone in this opinion on the vocals, I have read it in another review but nevertheless, I would find it amazing hearing a fantastic second album by Avoral with an amazing vocal performance from Frank. This album however, should be thrown away rather than be played.

HHHHHHH