Souls of Diotima
The Sorceress Reveals – Atlantis

The sorceress reveals Atlantis, isn’t it great that this sorceress was alive at the right time rather than on the heyday of Christianity when all she would have revealed was how she smelled when on fire. The story of Atlantis is an interesting one and here it is used as a bedtime story for a child with the most annoying voice I have ever heard. It is the third album of this Italian band and it is a very impressive undertaking with twenty tracks and 71 minutes of music telling the story of Atlantis, a story of love and war, of kings and gods and many other things rather typical of a bedtime story. And it is a bedtime story that looks pretty cool on the cover but I find it strange that the epilogue of the story is called prologue – unless they plan on a sequel.

Musically it starts with the beginning of a bedtime story that is being told by a mother to her child, a child with the most annoying voice and every time I hear it I wonder why the chose that way of portraying the child – there must have been other alternatives. The music that follows the bedchamber introduction is pompous, grand and elaborate – it is varied and spans over a large musical spectrum using mainly female vocals but we do hear some growling as well. The are several interludes with acting or narration, kind of remnant of Kamelot’s album Epica that was released many years ago although they didn’t really use narration in their interludes. The narrative makes it feel a little bit creatively lazy even though the parts fits well together. The production is great and the vocals are good as well, the album sounds as well produced as it is ambitiously conceived.

During the story we meet Atlas, Zeus and many other famous characters and we learn much about the story of Atlantis in a rather well told manner. Fans of the epic power/progressive metal will find this very appealing. There are some drawbacks though, I think the album should have been much shorter so that it had been more dynamic and leave you wanting more rather than feeling quite fed up with it, like you have eaten too much. It is an album that you do not want to hear for a long time after you have played it through and much of this is down to it being too much. There are some great atmosphere but there are also very much pointless stuff, I think narration should be used much more sparsely in order to make it mean something rather than being a lazy way to move the story forward – the story could have been better told in the music rather than in spoken words.

Overall though I don’t have that much to complain about, it works well and even though they should learn to embrace the “less is more” pathos they manage to tell a nice story. Fans of other bands who do not understand that cramming many things into the music doesn’t make it better is most certain to find this extremely interesting. I would have liked less talk and more content and a better child actor because I am really annoyed by the child that has the benefit of detracting from the boring storyteller mother. So in the end it is good but with 20 minutes less it would have been fantastic, now it is mostly fantastic as a bedtime story – makes me sleep every time.

HHHHHHH