Band:	Avandra
Album:	Prodigal
Style:	Progressive metal, Progressive rock
Release date:	November 18, 2022
A review by:	musclassia

01. Codename: Pharaoh
02. The Downpour
03. New Beginnings
04. A Trace Of Home
05. In Träumen
06. In Memoriam
07. Facing An Armored Dreadnaught
08. Dissembling The Artifice
09. The Earth Inside
10. Daybreak

Hailing from a country that has mainly produced thrash metal, extreme metal, or ‘whatever Puya are classed as’ metal, Puerto Rico’s Avandra stand relatively alone in sharing a more sophisticated type of metal to the world. They’ve been doing a pretty good job of it thus far as well, with solid releases such as Descender and Skylighting already under their belt; now, here comes Prodigal to try and match those benchmarks.

The type of prog-metal that Avandra play is one that draws from both classic and modern bands; between bandleader Christian Ayala’s lower-register soulful vocals and the soundscapes the band create, they feel connected to the more atmospheric prog bands that have emerged in more recent decades, but at the same time, there are elements in the more technical melodic instrumentation that suggest that Avandra also drink from the Dream Theater old-school progressive metal well. It’s a solid musical baseline that is then further mixed up with frequent softer detours, as the album alternates on virtually a song-by-song basis between straightforward prog and shorter, mellower cuts. It’s a promising enough musical approach, particularly given how successfully they’ve rendered their music into album form on their previous efforts; however, there’s something that is not quite clicking with me for this one.

Prodigal is one of the harder album types to write about; it’s not amazing, it’s not actively bad, and, unlike Skylighting, it’s not generally solid without reaching excellence. Instead it’s an album that features enough quality music to fall into that category, but fails to make the impact it should, for reasons clear and unclear. First, to consider some of the positives, the opening duo of “Codename: Pharaoh” and “The Downpour” (the only 2 consecutive metal songs on Prodigal) get the album off to a decent enough start; both are of the length where they can explore a bit (with some guitar and keyboard solos popping up) without becoming meandering, and both have a good mix of riffs and segments that represent the aforementioned mix of modern and more classic influences. Beyond that, the piano-driven “In Träumen” is the pick of the bunch in terms of the shorter non-metal cuts, its lush piano performance acting as a very pleasant mid-record lull. One more track that deserves kudos in particular is “In Memoriam”, a song that reminds me positively of some of Voyager’s stronger work, with some lush guitar and keyboard work and a fantastic up-tempo closing third.

As much as I enjoy these songs, though, the less impressive aspects of Prodigal aren’t easy to overlook. Probably my biggest issue when listening to the album is peculiarly one thing I emphasized as one of Avandra’s greatest strengths when reviewing Skylighting back in 2020, namely Ayala’s vocals. It’s odd, because listening back to a couple of songs from Skylighting, I don’t find my opinion to have changed, but in multiple instances here, I find myself irked or turned off by the vocals, so I don’t know whether it might partially come down to the respective production jobs on each album. However, where once they felt rich, they feel flat and almost off-note at times here. Probably the biggest test for whether the same will occur with you is to listen to the song “Facing An Armored Dreadnought”; aside from some backing clean guitar, this is purely a vocal vehicle, and at approaching 6 minutes, it’s one I struggle to get through. I also find these issues with the vocals to be unfortunate on the song “Dissembling The Artifice”, which has a frenetic guitar track in the chorus that I would be all over if I wasn’t struggling to click with the singing and pondering how it would sound with someone like Tom Englund on it instead.

The vocals and production, which feels muddier and less inviting than that off Skylighting (perhaps ironically reflecting the grey artwork here compared with the greater contrast on Skylighting’s cover), are my biggest obstacles to enjoying Prodigal, but I do also feel that the songs in general don’t always flow as compellingly as they could. “Dissembling The Artifice” does have that aforementioned guitar passage that makes me want to love the song, as well as a strong guitar solo, but the heavier verses and use of extreme vocals doesn’t work so much for me; the riff almost takes my mind to Amorphis, which unfortunately causes those growls to be compared unfavourably to Tomi Joutsen. “A Trace Of Home” is a song that is comprised of several different motifs, verses, choruses, etc., all of which I enjoy in isolation (particularly the more energetic clean-sung portion that, while sounding very distinct to Ayala’s other work on the record, I can only assume is performed by him without any other singers being credited), but I also find it to be a bit disconnected, again looking at the more extreme-leaning bits in particular.

This is by no means a failure of an album from Avandra; the talent that was evident on their previous couple of records is still clear here, and in its best moments it’s a very decent melodic prog record. Ultimately, though, the issues above that I’ve mentioned with it will hold me back from returning to it. Curiously enough, I mentioned Teramaze’s 2020 release I Wonder in my Skylighting review as being in a similar tier of ‘very good without quite excelling’, and for different reasons I think their latest record Flight Of The Wounded is again comparable, in that it’s a good album that doesn’t match the heights of its predecessors; I am optimistic that both will win me over again next time around.