NARNIA — Awakening (review)

Album · 1998 · Power Metal

3/5 · 2022-07-01
lukretion

Amidst the European power metal galore of the mid-1990s, Sweden stood out as a fertile land for the neoclassical brand of the genre, inspired by the work of guitar wizard Yngwie Malmsteen with his pyrotechnical mixture of Rainbow-infused hard rock, speed metal and baroque music. Founded in 1996, Narnia are one of the leading purveyors of the Swedish neoclassical metal scene that exploded in those years. The band coalesced around the artistic vision of guitarist CJ Grimmark and vocalist Christian Liljegren. Both musicians had already their own hard rock / metal bands at the time, but were interested in exploring a more bombastic and melodic form of hard rock and heavy metal and started Narnia as a vehicle to fulfil this ambition.

On their debut album Awakening, Liljegren and Grimmark worked as a duo, handling all instruments and vocals themselves, bar a few cameos from a couple of guest musicians. The material for the new album consisted in large part of re-arranged songs from the two musicians’ previous bands (Borderline, Modest Attraction and Sentinel), plus a couple of newly-penned songs. This is why a lot of the tracks on Awakening have a hard rock feel to them, closer to Rainbow and early Malmsteen’s Rising Force than Stratovarius and other power metal acts. The music alternates between epic mid-tempos and faster pieces, and is centred on Grimmark’s technical but melodic guitarwork that provides most of the songs’ texture. Keyboards are used too, but more sparingly. Rhythmically, there is nothing particularly adventurous, as the drums mostly keep a straight tempo with a few fills and flourishes. Unfortunately, it is quite obvious that the drum parts have been programmed as they sound very unnatural and plasticky (especially the cymbals). This is a major let-down because the artificial rhythmic backdrop gives the music a karaoke-like feel that takes away a lot of its power and allure.

This is unfortunate because Liljegren’s and Grimmark’s performances are otherwise excellent. The singer has a trained tenor voice featuring a strong vibrato. He mostly stays in his mid-range and is very controlled in his delivery, which some may find unappealing since it does not conform to the genre’s convention of rough-edged, high-register vocals. I actually find Liljegren’s voice one of the main strengths of the band, since it sets them apart from many other similar acts in the genre and, moreover, it is very pleasant and melodic. Grimmark’s guitar playing is also first-class. He is clearly inspired by guitarists of the calibre of Ritchie Blackmore and especially Malmsteen, to the point of adopting a similar sound too (listen to the acoustic guitar on “Heavenly Love”). And in fact legend narrates that when Grimmark and Malmsteen met, upon hearing Narnia’s early material, the guitar maestro commented: “That sounded quite a bit like me”.

Awakening’s tracklist is pretty solid, with almost no fillers or subpar songs (“Touch from You” being perhaps the weakest of the lot here). However, the album also lacks particularly strong episodes that remain seared in one’s ears and mind. The melodies are good, but not super catchy. Moreover, it is hard not to perceive a certain artificiality and formulaicity in the songwriting and delivery, which is partly due to the programmed drums as mentioned earlier, and partly to the rather cold production sound. Another downside is that the album lacks somewhat cohesion, alternating between downcast mid-tempos, love ballads, and gutsy hard rock numbers, in a tourbillion of styles that are not meshed well together. This probably reflects the album’s genesis as a collection of other bands’ re-arranged songs and makes for a slightly disjoint listening experience overall.

Despite these limitations, Awakening is a good debut album from a clearly talented and promising band. Liljegren and Grimmark will continue with much stronger albums, but Awakening is a decent enough starting point to deserve a recommendation not just for Narnia’s fans and collectors, but for fans of neoclassical metal and hard rock, more generally.