SONS OF SEASONS — Magnisphyricon (review)

SONS OF SEASONS — Magnisphyricon album cover

Album · 2011 · Progressive Metal

2/5 · 2011-07-05
cennsor

[review originally published on http://thecennsor.wordpress.com/]

This time it’s probably my fault for listening to Symphony X‘ just released new song Dehumanized prior to reviewing this album, but nothing at all can change my opinion Magnisphyricon is a grand, magniloquent, epic waste of (playing) time.

Symphony X‘ song isn’t even that great – all the worse for Sons of Seasons‘ sophomore release, meaning it doesn’t take much to outscore it. There’s a whole lot of things just not feeling right about it; so was my impression when I first listened to it (I must confess I did have some expectations about it), so is my opinion now I’ve made it through a more thorough second spin. Needless to say at this point, there will be no third.

I actually felt like Sons of Seasons did deserve more than one chance; after all, their debut Gods of Vermin wasn’t that bad, and I have to admit it displayed an overwhelming maturity for a rookie release. The sound was excellent, the production flawless as you’d expect, and the musicianship impeccable – also no surprise, Sons of Seasons being Kamelot keyboard player Oliver Palotai‘s own side project. What did hit me as a flaw back then, was what I felt like the album’s excessive complexity. I might’ve been misled by the rather down-to-earth proggy power metal his main band plays, but I found Palotai‘s intricacy hard to get through. The new album takes it further, failing me also the opposite way.

Let me elaborate. The song structure feels a lot more linear, and the blend of instruments far less symphonic than before, although this album still retains what I’d dub a “pretence of symphonism” all through it. To me, it’s sort of a failed attempt at a compact, kind of unifying sound. The album falls short of truly sounding symphonic, though the instruments are undoubtedly cleverly merged together: sort of a leftover from the previous album’s high intricacy, resulting in a far less convincing output. My lay impression is that just putting several kind of sounds together isn’t enough to form a self-sufficient entity. And this album is a proof to that.

The complexity is still to be heard in the multi-layered sound structure, with all the threads still showing the dangerous tendency of going their own way, at the risk for the album of falling apart. But, and here’s the difference from their previous, the choruses make an attempt at being “catchier” than before; they obviously fail at it, difficult as it is to link linear vocal lines to a complex jungle of background sound patterns already kind of fighting each other. As a result, the album sounds pretentious, far too ambitious, and it both fails at bringing it to a simpler level (if that ever was the intention), and at retaining the complexity of old. It’s all pretty much a hard fight between those two aspirations, and you’re left to question what exactly did the composers have in mind. Which direction did Sons of Seasons want to take their music? Do they stay stuck in the mud of a far too complex proposal to appeal to power metal fans (including Kamelot‘s, just for reference), or do they intend to lure them with the promise of easier-listening melodies, just to discard the premise abruptly when it also becomes clear they don’t actually want to move away from what made Gods of Vermin such a hard album to listen to?

You’re left to wonder, and that’s no good thing really. Each time a song starts off interestingly, like for example Soul Symmetry and Nightbirds Gospel do, it finally seems time for a straightening, except it soon turns out that’s not quite the intended way. The album couldn’t be more far-off from straightforward. This alone is of course not a problem: its predecessor wasn’t either, and it still pleased many a fan. What actually worries me more, is that Sons of Seasons haven’t gone an inch further in polishing off some of that unnecessary structural heaviness, and still they’re getting praised for what they’re playing. They certainly already developed what you may call a trademark sound; now whether that’s a good or a bad per se is very much debatable. Also, don’t get me wrong here: all who liked Gods of Vermin will find in Magnisphyricon a worthy successor; which is exactly what bothers me. The path Sons of Seasons set themselves onto at the beginning was to become a very promising one, provided they worked (hard) on polishing and simplifying their songwriting, on smoothening its edges may I say – which they of course didn’t at all.

THUS SPAKE THE CENNSOR: Magnisphyircon feels wrong and failed in many a way, starting from the title (are we serious? What’s that supposed to mean? That’s what you get when you toy with classic languages just ’cause it’s “cool”) to the actual music, which opens too many paths without ever deciding which to follow. Fans of Gods of Vermin are warmly advised to get it anyway, because they’re beyond doubt the intended audience. Fans of Palotai‘s (and Simone Simons‘: we all know there’s an undeniable fangirl-ism to being “fans” of such projects) are as well, because this is supposed to represent his skills as a musician and composer at their highest. This latter does sadden me a bit, but the world doesn’t revolve around the Cennsor‘s tastes – which is quite a relief. But, if you happen to fall anywhere near said despicable tastes, do yourself a favour and ignore this album outright. 5/10