Avatarium’s musical journey is on the surface a slightly unusual one, given where they started to where they are now. Originally, they were another Leif Edling (of Candlemass fame of course) side project, bearing all the traits you would expect, but with the twist of a bluesy, retro-sounding vocalist in the guise of Jennie-Ann Smith. Packed with crushing guitar riffs courtesy of Marcus Jidell, those early albums, were indeed able to stand easily alongside other Edling-fuelled bands such as Krux, Abstrakt Algebra and The Doomsday Kingdom (the latter also featuring Marcus Jidell). But when Edling stood aside to once more explore pastures new and old, Jidell and Smith fully took up the reigns on their 2017 and 2019 releases and Avatarium took on more and more of a life of its own.
Still classable as a Doom band in attitude, Avatarium now lean increasingly more to the melancholy, whilst adopting a more 60’s psyche-rock stand-point, which suits their sound perfectly and seems to come very naturally to them. Smith’s smoky vocal tones weave comfortable around Jidell’s mystical guitar lines, which, whether distorted or clean, are always delivered with a gloominess that holds the song in a darker place. Smith does a great job with the vocals once more, as well as with the lyrics, penning them all herself this time around and exploring wider subjects than previously. Vocally, she controls the heavier parts of the songs just as easily as the quieter tracks, delivering the vocal lines in a way that makes you feel she is deliberately keeping something in reserve, an audible power waiting to be unleashed. That restraint is made even more enticing when, on heavier tracks like ‘God Is Silent’ or ‘Nocturne’, she lets the shackles fall briefly – it’s such a unique and interesting way to vocally keep the listener guessing at every turn.
Initially, on first listen, Avatarium bear only a passing resemblance to the Doom Metal behemoth of the first two albums, but as you spend more time in the album’s presence you start to realise that they are actually still on a similar path to the one they have always been exploring, they’re just delivering the dark and gloomy elements of the songs in more diverse and unexpected ways. Take the added, haunting cello (also courtesy of Jidell) on tracks like ‘Love Like Ours’ and ‘Transcendent’, or the hints of dark jazz sprinkled sparsely here and there to mix things up. There has been a flow from one album to the next throughout the five albums Avatarium have made so far, each one a further, gradual step to who Avatarium will eventually become. They are still on their musical journey, this is just another stretch on a road that has no boundaries and plenty of curves, so who knows what more intriguing and interesting places they will take us.
(7.5/10 Andy Barker)
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