You have to admire the ambition in a project like Aeons Confer: with almost 80 minutes of fast, melodic and heavy metal (or ‘dark’ metal, as the band prefers) and six big hairy blokes from Hamburg involved – it’s a biggie. The concept is big – a sort of one man Event Horizon sci-fi epic. The bass lines are of planet shaking proportions and it all builds up to a colossal space juggernaut of a finish that could have easily been enough to make an album on its own and saved us all about 40 minutes. That’s not to say that the first half of this album is not impressive in parts but, well, we’ll come back to that in a bit. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this album is bursting at the seams because the band has been kicking around since 1997 and has only just got round to releasing its first full-length album – which is pretty amazing given the obvious level of quality and aspiration here. It’s all the more impressive then that this has been self-produced. Brothers Simon and Nils Wrobel are the driving forces behind the project that brings together elements of bands like black metal’s Negator, thrashers Soulsgate and power metal faves Stormwarrior.
Symphonies of Saturnus can be divided into two distinct halves. The good thing about the first half is that it’s all heads down, banging stuff. Normally albums like this quickly settle into relying on atmospherics and too many twiddly sound effects, and even, (yuk) spoken word passages. Ok, so there are all three on here but used with such a light enough touch, most notably in the first half, that even the most keyboard-averse would be forgiven for glossing over it. There’s the odd use of celestial host-type background chorals and some well-placed Dimmu-style clean vocals but, what the hell. When you’ve been pummelling those fret boards and bashing those skins for so long you have to hold a little back so you’ve still got room to go up to 11 without making your fingers bleed. The first seven tracks are more straightforward, balls-out metal and feel more like a collection of individual tracks. It’s clearly supposed to be the dark side of the album that goes with the story line. But it almost like a showcase for the band as well – to demonstrate what they are capable of before they really get down to the business of music exploration. I wouldn’t go so far to say it’s filler but at times it begins to stretch out before you a little. And when it’s compared to the more eventful second-half, it all becomes a little overshadowed.
The dividing line is with the keyboard-fest Descent which is basically a curtain raiser for the gigantic 13-minute Renaissance. Then we’re off. The following track The Order of Equilibrium is probably the biggest track on the album, which really is saying something, and it takes us into the three part finale. Perhaps the whole thing would begin to sound a bit more cohesive after a few listens and a bit more exploration – which this album certainly can offer to fans of this kind of sci-fi power thrash metal. But my advice is that if you find yourself flagging though the first few tracks, flick forward a few and return to first bit later when you’ve got yourself hooked. I suppose in the final analysis the keyboards, much more apparent in the second half, provide a bit of context for the sound and help to elevate it to the grandiose, melodic death/thrash/dark/power metal vision that the band are undoubtedly aiming for. I always try to resist the ‘should’ve been longer, shorter, more this, less that’ type comments but could this all have done with a little pruning? Yup. Does it matter when it’s all in there anyway? Well, arguably not in this age of digital carve-it-up-and-make-your-own. But I’m a full album at-a-time man. I’m perfectly happy to hunker down for the duration and see what the artist has to offer but resent having to manually edit 10 or 15 minutes worth of track time with my very own over-worked digits. That said, I’m sure anyone who fully buys into this band’s sound won’t be complaining. Aeons Confer has put itself on the metal map with this release. A nice package and an enjoyable jaunt thought time and space.
(7/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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