Overrated Meditation Music - A Review of Avatarium's Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead

Avatarium is a Swedish quartet that has been recommended to me on numerous occasions. I have finally come around to give the group's brand-new sixth full length effort with the complicated title Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead an honest spin. My disappointment is so strong that I feel no need whatsoever to check out the band's past or future efforts.

The quartet is somehow mislabeled as a doom metal band. Perhaps this is a genre covered on previous efforts. What we get here is mellow stoner rock at best with ambient, folk and new wave sections every now and then. Now, don't get me wrong, there are bands of all these genres that I appreciate greatly from Baroness over Tangerine Dream and Loreena McKennitt to The Cure to only name a few examples. The difference between these icons and Avatarium is that the former have clear distinctive identities while Avatarium has none.

The drums and percussions are serviceable at best and fail to stand out in any way at any given point. The bass guitar patterns sound uninspired, tame and exchangeable throughout. The female lead vocals are neither elegant nor gritty and thus sound pale and indistinctive throughout. The only reason why this release isn't worse than it already is are the playful use of cellos, guitars, keyboards and the piano on a few select short occasions. The only other positive element that deserves to be mentioned is the mellow production that blends in fittingly on this output.

Despite a length of only forty-three minutes separated into eight sleep-inducing tracks, this records sounds about twice as long as it fails to get to the point and might only serve as a remedy against sleepless nights.

Whatever fans of the band can hear in Avatarium, I most certainly cannot. Avatarium's Between You, God, the Devil and the Dead is a tiresome soft rock record that fails in this genre and is neither appealing to fans of ambient, folk and new wave subgenres nor to doom metal or stoner rock fans. At the end of the day, this release is forgettable and already a strong candidate for weakest studio album of the new year.