#1
Chronicles of the Immortals: Netherworld
Vanden Plas
Genre: progressive metal
2015 / 2016
Recommended to me by: obscure via her music magazine
Now, some of you may say I’m cheating again including two albums here, but I really just consider this a big concept double album of music, despite both discs having been released separately with a one-year gap. Furthermore, I didn’t discover this directly from DTF, but rather from Lady Obscure Music Magazine where we had a promo for Part 1 before release date, and everyone seemed to be raving about it. But since I’ve become part of the LOMM team because of DTF, I figured this particular record should be eligible for this list.
Another aspect of including both albums here is that I genuinely have a difficult time to tell which one I like more. Both feature excellent progressive metal songs, and both are extremely consistent in quality, but that could be said about the whole Vanden Plas discography, really. If I had to use one word to describe Vanden Plas’ music, I’d say they’re consistent. Of course, the production quality evolved over the years, and I’d say
Chronicles of the Immortals: Netherworld features the best mix and production compared to other VP albums, and that obviously helps; but production alone doesn’t make the album. Combined with exceptionally strong songwriting, though, it elevates this magnificent record straight to the top of my list.
The singer, Andy Kuntz, is easily recognizable because of his peculiar accent and singing style; among all the albums on this list, this is easily the one with the most misheard lyrics for me, and I avoided looking at the booklets on purpose (although I suppose I’ll have to do it when I’ll post this, to find a suitable lyric for the thread title), so that I can sing out loud gems like
"with your breeches down in my land of no return". However, the fact that I’m unable to understand what exactly Andy is singing doesn’t take away anything from this record. In any case, I suspect that the album’s concept is much closer to Avantasia than to Ayreon: the protagonist is trespassing the Netherworld, there are monsters, vampires (be ready for a lot of fire / empire / vampire rhymes), a Godmaker, some children of the Lost World (which apparently go away somewhere in the second part?), and that’s about it.
There was a part of me that was worried if they would be able to match the quality of Part 1, but if I had any doubts, they all were dispelled after I started listening to the record.
In My Universe is such a powerful and epic opener, and the whole run from
Misery Affection to
Where Have the Children Gone is fantastic, with maybe
Godmaker’s Temptation being the only not-so-stellar song in it. There’s a lot of headbang-worthy material, there are slower, majestic songs, there are touching ballads and there are recurring motifs throughout the entire album, some subtle, some not quite. This record is an excellent example of how to do a long concept progressive metal album right.
Favourite songs from Part 1:
Vision 6ix: New Vampyre (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Vision 8ight: Misery Affection (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Vision 9ine: Soul Alliance (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Vision 10n: Inside (
YouTube,
Spotify)
Favourite songs from Part 2:
Vision 11even: In My Universe (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Vision 13teen: Stone Roses Edge (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Vision 15teen: Monster (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Vision 17teen: Where Have the Children Gone (
YouTube,
Spotify)
And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed this and perhaps discovered a few albums from this list. After this I’m planning to do a third edition of my roulette, so be on lookout for that if you plan to participate.
Happy New Year everyone, and I’ll see you around DTF in 2019!