Long live Dol Ammad. May they keep putting out totally absurd and brilliant albums.

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Dol Ammad’s debut, Star Tales, grew on us like a rash that felt soooo good to scratch. It took a while to realize it, but Dol Ammad’s take on power metal making love to dance club electronica while a 14-piece classical choir belted it out in always grand, often absurd fashion is unique. Hopefully it will inspire more bands to go this pompously glorious fashion. Check out our review of the first album to learn more.
Make no mistake, Dol Ammad is unabashedly campy, silly, and, well... gay. But in being all that, it is also beautiful, stirring, triumphant and undeniably essential. It’s like the music is of the making by a person (Thanasis "Lightbridge," keyboarder and lead wonky madman) who is equally enamored with opera and video game music, who has an equally good time at the symphony as he does a Eurotrash rave. And he’s also got a ton of talented friends, like the choir, Rhapsody drummer Alex Holzwarth and prog metal notable DC Cooper, who guests on "Aquatic Majesty."
Now it’s a question of comparing album one and two. Since day one, Dol Ammad’s stylistic voice has been clear, but Ocean Dynamics sees the project veer slightly away from the power metal domain. Still tons of 4/4 double kick groove of varying tempos, but elements like pseudo-black metal blastbeats and deeper explorations of a more relaxed atmosphere make this album remarkably different. The elements of heavenly, layered vocal lines, slick, hi-tech drumming, endless layers of keyboard and keyboard effects (dolphin chatter, anyone?), and totally incongruous electronica / trance bits are still in full force, resulting in a genuinely fun and wondrous album. And when the warm bass picking, noodly keyboard melody, and wall of bass drums kicks in with the singing troupe of angels, it’s always totally great. As one would hope from album to album, the production is a little bigger and fuller.
There are a couple gripes, though. The main one is "Descent," a languid and otherwise atmospherically appealing track that is unfortunately a throw away as the great majority of the vocals are done in some in-time whispered female talking. If there’s anything we’re checking in for, it’s not this. Also, as good as DC Cooper is a vocalist, his presence here is rather awkward, just as it was guesting on Edenbridge’s third album. Here, his more typical for the genre voice brings the proceedings down to earth, so to speak... where Dol Ammad needs to stay up there in the fantasy stars, not caring what anybody down here thinks of it.
That’s really it. Long live Dol Ammad. May they keep putting out totally absurd and brilliant albums. We hesitated to give the debut a 9+. We sometimes think we should, just for the sheer uniqueness of this project. We should probably do the same for the follow-up, but "Descent" is a drag. Same score.

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