Oooh symphonic lady vocal metal! This week The Shannon’s Home, care of Xandria. I hope it’s pronounced Cross-Andria, like X-Mas. You know a band is going to be epic when there’s an old dude in a beret playing a fife, and Xandria has one! These guys have been belting out songs about inner struggles and “feelings” since 1994. Figure they’d have their feelings all figured out by now, but maybe it’s a life long process. Apparently their current singer, Ambre Vourvahis, is their sixth. Usually bands go through bassists like it’s no big deal, not singers.
Plinky plunky pianos and Mr. Beret lead off the song by playing the melody before the rest of the band kicks in. Ambre’s voice is pretty solid, able to fill out the melodies without sounding operatic. I’m not the biggest fan of overtly operatic vocals in my metal. There is a heavy breakdown halfway through. I bet if the song came out in like 2002, this is where a guy with a bunch of piercings would rap about feelings. The guitar solo is short and sweet, riffing on the main themes of the song, before Mr. Beret gets a chance to shine leading to KEYCHANGE. The song closes out with some grampas guitars before Mr. Beret gets a fife solo. Rules he gets to do that; you don’t see many fife solos nowadays. At five and a half minutes, the song fits into the symphonic zone pretty easily. I think if it cracks the six minute mark it becomes prog metal. I don’t make the rules, I just reiterate them poorly.
The video cuts between the band playing in a giant clock and then the singer and Mr. Beret in an enchanted glade. I think if you’re a symphonic metal band, you have to be in front of a clock in at least one song, otherwise the metal gods make you play a different genre. Pretty sure I read that in Harper’s Bazaar.