Band:	Serenity
Album:	Codex Atlanticus
Style:	Symphonic power metal
Release date:	January 29, 2016
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Codex Atlanticus [feat. Amanda Somerville]
02. Follow Me
03. Sprouts Of Terror
04. Iniquity
05. Reason
06. My Final Chapter
07. Caught In A Myth
08. Fate Of Light
09. The Perfect Woman [feat. Amanda Somerville]
10. Spirit In The Flesh
11. The Order
12. Forgive Me [bonus]
13. Sail [feat. Natascha Koch] [bonus]
14. My Final Chapter [orchestral version] [bonus]

As somebody who takes the utmost care not to stray into the symphonic genre on most occasions, I looked upon Serenity as a rose in a minefield when I discovered War Of Ages in the 2013 MS Awards. It's a pleasure to have the band reappear on my radar with Codex Atlanticus, a delightful reassurance that no genre entirely lacks appeal, even to those utterly bored with the concept.

Georg Neuhauser possesses the range - here speaking more in terms of style than octaval breadth - to make Serenity continuously engaging, changing up his delivery throughout the songs to accommodate shifts in direction or mood. His voice, clean and commanding while not overbearing, offers a refreshing change of pace from the typical, foppish blank slates you always hear scraping the skies like chipmunks doing their best Tarja impersonation. Neuhauser's voice contributes significantly to this album's replay value. That's not to discount, however, the actual quality of songwriting or other performances.

I find a lot of symphonic metal cumbersome and overly dense, eternally engaged in the pursuit of becoming more and more bombastic and operatic at the expense of being accessible. That may be a hypocritical reaction from somebody who can spare a lot of time for power metal, symphonic's close cousin, especially when there is so much overlap, but I find that the metal aspects tend to be underwritten and the symphonic aspects tacked on more for effect than meaning.

Serenity definitely embraces the distinctive devotion to "bigness" that plagues the more heroic metal genres, with the sweeping, orchestral keyboards and chanting choirs and ludicrously posh dramaticism - but Serenity succeeds by knowing where to draw the line. Codex Atlanticus never drowns itself in fustian set pieces, and never loses sight of its musicality in pursuit of the epic chorus that everybody always seems to need; the songs never forsake memorability in the name of avoiding cliches, but neither do they lose all self-respect and turn into Evanescence.

Songs like the magnificent "Sprouts Of Terror" and "Spirit In The Flesh" really rip, with the grandiose backgrounds handily complementing the hard-hitting riffs and Neuhauser's impassioned vocals. Guest vocals from Amanda Somerville and Natascha Koch help fill out the backdrop beautifully. Even the silly songs (looking at you, "Perfect Woman") remembered to bring along enough personality to avoid coming off like a complete farce, and I'm much more willing to indulge Serenity now and again since Codex Atlanticus has more substance to offer than faux-majestic filler.