Aldaria
Land of Light

Frode Hovd known from the band Memorized Dreams has put together a power metal opera for which he has enlisted some well-known names from the metal scene. Aldaria is what he calls the project and the album Land of Light is a story about the battle between light and darkness, good and evil. The story concept is very classic concept and they music itself sounds a lot like what we heard in the early days of Avantasia. The album with the nice cover art has been mixed by Roland Grapow and mastered by Jacob Hansen, and with such many well know artist it should rival Avantasia and perhaps even my favourite power metal opera Aina. So lets see what happens when Hallowed takes a look at this land of light.

The musical analysis shows a fairly typical power metal album from the ranks of Helloween inspired artists, and I don’t think the concept is particularly apparent when I listen to this album. It is also not very obvious that it is an opera styled album as most vocalists sound too much alike, kind of the same thing that could be said about the first Avantasia album where it sounded like Tobias Sammet with some guest vocals. And this while Hovd doesn’t even sing on the album. And the album is long with an hour playing time and the songs are of the typical variation for an album of this genre – I don’t think that this album offers anything that we haven’t heard before, it is eerily familiar even the first time I hear it.

With this Aldaria album we get the same poppy and modern catchy power metal album that most bands heavily inspired by bands like Helloween offer. Good and catchy songs, strong vocals and good production are strong points of this album. But this album also suffers from the law of diminishing returns where you enlist a large number of competent people and still walk away with something that could have been made by using only five or six of them. There are many resources used to come up with the same thing as many other ordinary power metal bands come up with and at best this album rivals the worst albums made by Avantasia and are far from the best. I can’t help but thinking that Hovd tries to bite off more than he can chew, but when you aim for the moon and end up somewhere around the treetops you have at least made some progress and no one can argue away the fact that this is a good album.

Neither can they argue away the fact that with so much competence lending their skills to the album it should have been a lot better. The only time we really hear the promise of this project is in the great ending title track, the rest of the tracks are good but nothing that really stand out in the grand scheme of things. I would probably not have been disappointed if I had bought this album but thanks to having the fortune to hear it beforehand I know that I don’t have to buy it. Hovd and his Aldaria give us a strong power metal album, but it isn’t as special as I feel it should have been.

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