This album is a revolutionizing landmark and will possibly set new, synthesized standards for the evolution of future metal. The Luke Skywalker of metal is born and his name is Thanasis Lightbridge.

You are here: Feedback › Reviews › Dol Ammad - Star Tales

'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….'
Aren't you sick and tired from all those mister know-it-alls and raving reviewers who give exorbitant high marks to the most obscure and irrelevant bands? Just take a look in zines as Rock Hard, Kerrang!, Aardschok, Metal Hammer or especially the Dutch magazine Headache: the unashamed six out of six, ten out of ten, fifteen out of fifteen (or whatever scale they'll come up with) are countless. Instant confession: we from Lords Of Metal are no exception. So many people, so many flavours. Favourite flavours among metal heads are mostly the kinds that taste like darkness, moodiness, aggression, anger, ugliness, rage, negativity, gloom and doom. In the whole spectrum of metallic music you can't find many happy and sweet chords. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel without any sarcastic undertones? Well, then we're not interested. Because happy songs: that's shallow, isn't it? At least, that's what people say. It's the well-known problem of positive, major chords: the overall thought that it suggests superficiality. People don't like shallowness, even if it's only a suggestive one.
Dol Ammad makes positive, optimistic music, but it's everything except superficial. On the contrary: this is another unknown, obscure band that is honoured with a ridiculous high mark. Believe it or not, but Dol Ammads obscurity is something that will be quickly belong to the past when people start to realize that 'Star Tales' is so much more than all those thousands other (too) highly praised, but eventually utter irrelevant and forgotten metal albums. Dol Ammad, with his captain by the name of one Thanasis Lightbridge, gave a first indication of his enlightened 'spacemanship' by a remarkable fresh and uplifting demo two years ago, and 'Star Tales' have redeemed this promise completely.

Well, 'nuff said, this looks more than an unpaid promotional campaign to get a discount for my next holiday trip to Greece than a proper review, so let's get down to business: What's this Dol Ammad any way? Strictly speaking, Dol Ammad is the Greek answer to Therion. Bombastic metal with a sixteen-headed choir. Nothing new under the Greek sun, although the amount of Therion-clones is rather thin. Influence-speaking it's definitely a positive point, if only for the complex structures and level of difficulty of this type of metal. Other elements in Dol Ammad's music contain orchestral atmosphere like Bal Sagoth, contemporary classical atmosphere like Nightwish and the symphonic space rock of Ayreon. That's all not too bad of course, but on its merit still not remarkable. It's starting to get a little wondrous when you start noticing other influences that are very, very rare in metal. These influences – and it's way more than just slight hints! – can be found in the epicentre of the synthesizer world with illustrious people as Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre and Kitaro. New Age-like key-kings who produce music that are light-years away from our robust and tough metal music. Nevertheless, no matter how (e)strange, not-every-day and maybe even disturbing this may sound like, it's still not remarkable or a reason to jump a hole in the sky. But that will definitely happen when you hear that all these influences and styles have been brilliantly put together into an album that sounds damn accessible and really innovative at the same time. This album is just perfect.
Even the angle to create original music is original, because how many pioneers have fallen in the trap of inaccessible songwriting, whereby clever musical vultures picked up their creativity to crystallize it for the masses? No vultures in the sky around Dol Ammad, because the keyboard melodies and choral vocal lines are already catchy as hell and therefore accessible for a large audience. The only thing that people may have to get used to is the huge and incredible "thick" wall of sound of the album. Phil Spector was just child's play. The mix is so thick and voluptuous compressed, the layers of keyboards are so high, the drums are hitting so massive (by Alex Holzwart from Sieges Even and Rhapsody-fame), the mixed choir (six men, six women) are singing so fierce, that there isn't just one single breath left for any decent guitar screaming. You hardly hear any guitar in the mix and while 99 per cent of metal albums are dominating by guitars, you can call this at least another remarkable thing. Nevertheless, I hardly missed the six strings and in some songs like 'Back To The Zone' there is certainly some room left for our favourite instrument. Due to the overwhelming sound, an occasional fragment of the songs are a little suppressed in its dynamics (like the chorus in the thrilling 'Eclipse'), but with a couple of adventurous instrumental and more on keyboard focused songs you haven't got any time to nag about this. The album consist of twelve songs, but is such logically structured that it sounds like one long, fluid space travel journey through a musical universe of unexplored galaxies and supernova's.
Therion needed a double album ('Lemuria / Sirius B') to create (finally) another small masterpiece. Dol Ammad does the same, but managed to do it with a single (and debuting) album. This album is a revolutionizing landmark and will possibly set new, synthesized standards for the evolution of future metal. The Luke Skywalker of metal is born and his name is Thanasis Lightbridge.

http://www.lordsofmetal.nl/showreview.php?id=4942&lang=en