Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

An enduring trend in the progressive/power metal genre has been the all-star effort, where one musician writes up an album’s worth of material and invites all his friends to perform on it. Some of these albums have been duds, but usually it’s a win-win situation for the fans – people who are into a particular musician get more of his stuff than if they had to wait for a band’s next release, and fans of the guests get a fix, too. While some people (Arjen Lucassen, for example) have pretty much made a career out of this, most others are more circumspect in their usage of this particular trick. Edguy’s Tobias Sammet, for example, used the moniker Avantasia to unleash some of his more ornate musical fantasies on a pair of “Metal Opera” albums.
 
Sammet recently dug up the brand name to release another side project album. This time, Avantasia treads more typical power/prog metal territory. The shift away from his usual straight ahead power metal he delivers with Edguy doesn’t hinder this album much, as I might claim it to be addition by subtraction. What Sammet brings here instead is an attempt to stretch his wings, try out a couple of forays into poppier realms, as well as feeding his core audience with the usual bombast and over-the-top melodies they expect from him. To help flesh out his vision, Sammet scored some of the usual suspects to voice his work, including the omnipresent Jorn Lande, Helloween’s Michael Kiske, and Roy Khan from Kamelot. A couple of the non-typical names make the biggest splash, however, with Alice Cooper showing up for a track, and Amanda Somerville offering her ethereal voice to the proceeding. Unfortunately, Sammet largely wastes a number of these guest vocals by insisting on singing most of the songs himself.
   
The disc’s opening notes set the tone, with a stomping, distorted guitar/keys intro leading off in an almost martial fashion. The chorus of that first track, Twisted Mind, is catchy, and memorable, but I couldn’t help but thinking the bottom line, “There’s no way out,” would have been that much more effective if Sammet had just let Roy Khan handle it. Thankfully, he backs off a bit on Shelter From the Rain, a paean to Helloween voiced by Michael Kiske himself. A little bit of good power metal goes a long way in his hands.
   
Sammet stumbles a bit in the disc's midsection, as he exploressome of those softer musical regions with decidedly mixed results. Carry Me Over, starts the trend with a simplistic pop soundtrack that really never goes anywhere. What Kind of Love, follows as the first outright ballad, and there isn’t much there either, but Amanda Somerville’s vocals raise this track to an acceptable level.
      
Tracks 6-8 really make/save the CD despending on your point of view, with Another Angel Down quickly making up for lost time after the slower songs. While that track really gets the head nodding again, it’s The Toy Master, with Alice Cooper welcoming you to another of his nightmares that really steals the show. Cooper’s vocals don’t match the other guest vocalist soaring styles, and as such really sticks out as different and creepy, and are all the more effective for it. When he sings, “I’m the master of toys/and all you girls and boys/are welcome to my wonderland,” you’re tempted and petrified all at once. Sammet backs this stellar cut up with another power metal speedster,  Devil in the Belfry.
     
After that, though, the album kind of stumbles to a close, with a weak ballad, a could have been interesting cut, I Don’t Believe in Your Love, that fails despite the presence of Scorpions’ guitarist Rudolf Schenker, and the much maligned album closer, Lost in Space. Prior to the release of The Scarecrow, Sammet used this track to anchor not one, but two singles. I’ll just be kind and say that, as a pop track, it isn’t too bad. It’s a crappy way to close out a metal album, though, a real letdown compared to some of the highlights on the rest of the disc.
     
Overall, there’s enough good stuff on here to carry Avantasia through its weaker moments. The Scarecrow, doesn’t quite manage to match the prior Metal Operas released under the Avantasia brand name, but it does qualify as a decent disc to pass the time. Only time will tell, though, whether Sammet goes further down the pop road, or sticks to what he does best.