Avantasia - The Metal Opera Pt II (2002)

Tobias Sammet returns with his power metal friends for the second part of Gabriel fighting all sorts of evil, and saving Anna, and such stuff. Look, alright, I don't follow these stories as well as I should, but that's partly because I'm trying to concentrate on the actual songs, rather than spend my time reading all their backgrounds.
And there are more special songs here. There's one fourteen minute epic, "The Seven Angels" which, unusually, starts things off, rather than finish them, and there's plenty to like in it, and what follows is more straight power metal with plenty of catchy choruses with the likes of "No Return", "The Final Sacrifice", and "Chalice Of Agony", all performing with the glittering array of names such as Sammet himself, Michael Kiske, David DeFeis, Kai Hansen, Bob Rock and Timo Tolki (those are some of the names I recognise - I'm still no fountain of knowledge in this genre). The slow parts are a bit of a drag, and maybe this isn't quite as good as Part 1, but it's still highly enjoyable, rousing stuff, and again I have to say that, while I still don't think Tobias has the greatest voice in the world, there's no denying his skills when it comes to song writing. He knows how to deliver.

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