Review Summary: The album that plays inside your head.
The title track of Avatarium’s sixth release spins these lines on a soaring chorus while ballooning as it’s about to explode in your face with a crushing finale but instead it just deflates and vanishes. This idea got me thinking though, as I initially powered through the album with the little resolve I had after a gruesome working day, resisting the tantalizing call of my pillow as the night invited to pour some more wine instead of succumbing to the warmth of my cotton sheets. Jennie-Ann Smith was enough reason to keep me glued to my headphones, but I won’t lie, my first contact with “Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead” wasn’t very promising, and that’s not a secret I will keep between me, God, my boss and my future grandchildren.
First things first, let me confess, I’m not an avid Avatarium fan. I discovered their 2013 debut not long ago and immediately fell in love with them, but that's about all I've known of them. If the idea of a doom supergroup with the best female voice you could possibly imagine would ever materialize out of thin air, Avatarium would be the vivid realization of such concept. After six releases, the Avatarium of 2025 is slightly different from the Avatarium I heard for the first time, so the album that was playing in my head before release and the one I got to hear just a few days ago were, let’s say, anything but a reflection in the mirror. I wouldn’t say the band has become something they’re not. On the contrary, this last album seems to represent every stage the band has gone through in their 12 years of existence but they still have managed to fully delve into the classic, the vintage, the sounds of old, crafting a very interesting piece of occult rock and doom.
This last album veers heavily to classic rock, and blues. There’s a conscious effort in bringing their sound close to late 70s Rainbow, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, and Smith clearly sounds like she’s been possessed by Ronnie James Dio in more than one occasion. She has always been the driving force of this band and once more it’s her performance what takes the spotlight on the album. The Candlemass influence that was their foundation (let’s not forget this was Leif Edling’s project initially) remains untouched, and when they go down and heavy they do go deep down and very heavy. Marcus Jidell (from Evergrey, Royal Hunt) knows how to make his guitar wail and roar shaving the ground with truly malignant riffs.
The first half of the album is diverse and intriguing. A song like “I See You Better in the Dark” signals an intention to do things differently and the result is a shorter track that feels fresh and riveting. Surrounding it are the imposing opener “Long Black Waves” and the smashing single “My Hair is on Fire (But I’ll Take Your Hand)”, which is followed by the probably the most surprising moment of the album, “Lovers Give a Kingdom to Each Other”. A dark americana venture is something I didn’t expect from them but it fits them like a glove.
Side B is when things get a bit more challenging. Two hefty tracks “Being with the Dead” and “Until Forever Again” will put your true loyalty to doom to test. Don’t get me wrong, the two songs are fantastic, but their placement feels like a mountain that one must climb to find out that there’s actually not much to see at the top. “Notes From the Underground” is a rather inconsequential instrumental cut (why would you include an instrumental when you have one of the best voices in the business at your disposal) which leads to the closing ballad and title track “Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead”. For all the grandiosity that emanates from most of the tracks of the album, I feel they could have made something more ambitious with this closer, which after weaving an incredibly engaging melody and cadence, it just dies like it has ran out of gas.
All in all, Avatarium is still a force to be reckoned with. Fans of Blood Ceremony or Lucifer should not leave this band unchecked and there’s plenty to delve into when looking at their voluptuous discography. It’s still a genre I’ll never get tired of, as the combination of a lady’s vocals and music that can raise the dead from their tombs is something that has a very strange and incomprehensible effect on my psyche, so if you’re curious about what’s the latest going on in the dewi-coreverse, wait no more, here it is.