Valkyrian Music

Band: Meden Agan
Album: Erevos Aenaon
Release date: September 2011
Genre: Symphonic Metal
Label: Unsigned

Greek symphonic metal band Meden Agan release their debut long player, ‘Erevos Aenaon’.  An independently released album featuring 9 tracks (plus three ‘extended versions’ to make 12 tracks total,) of keyboard led, operatic metal.  Meden Agan have shared the billing with bands such as ‘Lacuna Coil’, ‘Epica’, ‘Xandria’ and ‘Delain’ amongst others and as such should grant you a pretty good idea of what to expect from this release.

Since Nightwish blew the doors open for female fronted, bombastic metal with an operatic flavour back in 2004 (‘Once‘), many bands have aspired to their success.  Festivals have even been created especially to cater to fans wanting to see all female-fronted metal.  There are fans of all ages drawn to the accessibility of symphonic/power metal, but in the same breath others are repelled by the very same aspects of the genre.  Meden Agan know the staples that make good operatic metal, they incorporate the riffs and keyboard flourishes you’d expect of the genre, and they have two very strong talents in singer Iliana Tsakiraki and keyboardist Tolis Mikroulis.  The only issue is that Meden Agan are just…good.

There are fans who will soak this album in like a sponge and love every grandiose sing along chorus; but for the fair weather listener, it’s the self-same  chugging riffs, keyboard introductions and grandiose chorus’ heard on albums by any of the bands listed above.  The songs are well written with an ear for harmony and note perfect melodies by soprano  Iliana Tsakiraki, ‘Dissolve Into Grey’ displays the excellent musicianship of both guitars and keyboards, and album highlight ‘Tribute To Life’ shows what potential there is for true greatness if the band were to take a few more risks.

‘Erevos Aenaon‘ is a strong starting point for a band in their ascendency.  With a little more originality and a little less adherence to the genre’s clichés, Meden Agan should be appearing at metal festivals all around Europe in the future.

3.5/5

Tobias Gray

This entry was posted on 2nd May 2012 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Review with tags Epica, Female fronted band, Greece, Operatic Metal, Symphonic Metal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.