Review Summary: Good enough.
Anette Olzon has been going strong since her departure from Nightwish. She’s had recent solo releases, and is also the frontwoman for The Dark Element, a band that produce solid albums yet thus far haven’t matched Nightwish’s creative output and variety of sound. This leads us to Allen/Olzon, a collaborative project involving the singer from Symphony X. Army of Dreamers scratches the Nightwish itch, but doesn’t begin to fill the void.
Army of Dreamers does its own thing, or at least it tries. Both singers here are fantastic, with duel harmonies and duets similar to Visions of Atlantis. The songwriting leaves the album in the realm of mediocrity unfortunately, with nothing particularly special to add to the symphonic metal genre (are you really surprised?). The lyrical content isn’t particularly interesting either. The symphonic bombast and occasionally firey riff - complete with delicious guitar solos - is the type of content on offer, a generic offering significantly improved when topped with two seasoned singers.
The album goes as you might expect with impressively polished and buttery smooth vocal performances among chorus-hungry tracks. Choruses sound great, but they’re not played with enough zeal to truly stick to memory. The same can be said about the album which is more focused on pretty melodies than producing something challenging or more gruff. The music isn’t worse from its lack of originality, but the tracks barely differentiate themselves. If you’ve heard one track you’ve heard them all, and with such little nuance the album teeters towards monotony despite crowd pleasing melodies.
Overall, Army of Dreamers is a perfectly ordinary symphonic metal album. With such big name singers I was hoping for an album that would be one for the ages, but I doubt this album will survive the test of time. This entire ‘slap some symphonic bits on there’ attitude is getting a little old. Compared to the latest releases from Epica and Visions of Atlantis and countless other symphonic bands, this project doesn’t endeavour much outside of its excellent singing. It’s a great sounding release but with a markedly low amount of surprises.
