MELODIUS DEITE - Episode III: The Archangels And The Olympians

10 songs
68:34 minutes
***** ***
(self-released)

Bandpage

Heavy metal from Thailand is something you don’t come across every day from where I come from. Melodius Deite have been founded in Bangkok in 2007 and are now back with their third album Episode III: The Archangels And The Olympians, which is a prime example of symphonic progressive power metal. That may be a lot of words to describe a single genre, but all of them make sense in the context of this band.

Melodius Deite are the brainchild of guitarist and main composer Biggie P. Phanrath, a guy who must really have studied hard on how to craft the perfect symphonic progressive power metal band. While the musicians are all from Thailand, the band decided to get Lean Van Ranna from Brazil as their new vocalist. This may make things a bit harder to rehearse together, considering that Bangkok is half a world away from São Paulo. But from an artistic point of view, this line-up change definitely makes sense. Where the old vocalist was anything but bad, the new one gives Melodius Deite that certain something that might propel them to the very top of the melodic power metal scene. At times you might think you’re actually listening to Angra.

The new album is at nearly seventy minutes running time a very vast affair, and you can split it into three different parts, the first one consisting of five songs about Saints – Michael, Raguel, Raphael, Gabriel and Azrael – embedded between two one-minute tracks that might work as an intro and an outro. It’s this part of the album that I have come to like best, as the band shows that they know all the tricks of the trade. The music is complex yet catchy, speedy yet never chaotic. The second part are just two songs. The Lost Tales is a duet with a female singer from Thailand, and is a more commercial sounding track. Not bad as such, and maybe a good way to let the listener breathe after the first half hour of symphonic power metal extravaganza. Forever (Hades and Persephone) is a power ballad that makes it over seven minutes, again quite well done if maybe a little on the long side.

Then we come to the final part of the album. Genesis Of The 13 Olympians (War Deities) is at twenty-four minutes a true behemoth, but it is definitely not your typical power metal song. Instead this is like a marriage between progressive metal and experimental classical music, reminding me a lot of what Mekong Delta used to do. This is mostly an instrumental affair, with a lengthy narration towards the end by a woman who unfortunately is lisping quite badly so that the drama of her tale at times makes you wince or smile, especially at the words that contain a lot of "s" and "f". Still it is a very ambitious track, and a good way to close the album, because if you are not so much into music experiments, then you can just skip it and still have three-quarters of an hour of really fascinating symphonic progressive power metal.

To make Episode III: The Archangels And The Olympians an even more international endeavour, there are guest vocals from musicians from such diverse countries as Argentina, Spain and Kuwait. If you like bands like Angra, Rhapsody Of Fire, Avantasia and the likes, then you will be delighted by this exotic yet utterly professional take at neoclassical power metal.