Vivaldi Metal Project
The Four Seasons

A man named Mistheria from Italy seem to have a strong fascination for the classic composer Antonio Vivaldi, so much that he decided to take that music and make his own version of The Four Seasons. And to realise his vision he has enlisted the help of more than 130 musicians, which makes this possibly the biggest “all star metal project” so far. Just to compare that with another pretty big project, Ayreon’s latest studio effort The Theory of Everything featured 20 musicians of which seven were vocalist, this project has 37 vocalists and some choirs. Somehow it is like when you write many words in a story, you tend to get to a point where you get diminishing returns for what you add.

Mistheria has enlisted the help of many people to help arrange and write lyrics and things for example Douglar R. Docker (whom I reviewed earlier this year) who has written most of the lyrics for the songs that builds on The Four Seasons composition but are rearranged in a more pompous metallic way. Except for the opening and ending songs that are original compositions by Mistheria. I think the performances are good all across the line and the music is majestic, it is impressive how they have pulled it all together. The sound and production is really great and the variations through the songs are really good as well. I think this is a really strong feat and that completing a task like this with some many musicians is really impressive, it could just as well have been a complete nightmare musically but it isn’t.

But, there is always this sensation of the journey being greater than the goal, the work more impressive than the result and I cannot help but thinking that this could just as well have been made with a sixth of the people who has been part of this album. Ayreon and Sasha Path’s opera Aina are two excellent examples of this, they are as impressive, if not more, but they use just a fraction of the people. It is something of a law of diminishing return here as other symphonic metal bands and projects can be as impressive, bombastic and majestic but not using the same amount of people. Sure you can argue that using live orchestras and choirs gives more life and that may be so, but it doesn’t add many per cent to the whole of the calculation and in the end it feels like a bit of overkill.

This of course does not mean that we are dealing with a poor album, rather the opposite. I think that this is a great album with excellent sound and excellent performance as well as really good songs. Sure it may not be as good as anything by Ayreon but I think this project is something that should appeal to anyone who likes their metal symphonic. But maybe it has something of a weakness in the fact that I don’t quite think the songs feels fully connected, like the opera is a bit fragmented and personally I would have liked more of a sensation of the original work on this album, this feels more like something of a derivation of the work but not as related as one might believe when looking at the premise and the artwork – but it may have been the point to make something unique based on The Four Seasons.

I am writing long just to show that more isn’t better, 74 minutes isn’t often better than 50 and 130 musicians isn’t often better than 20. So I say in many more words than you need that this is an album that is very good and it is definitely worth checking out as I believe you might find it as appealing as I am. But I don’t think that this is the best metal opera or big metal project I have heard, just like I don’t think this review is one of my better. It just goes to prove the point that more isn’t always better; it could have been more scaled down without loosing any appeal. As I have already stated the amazing Theory of Everything by Ayreon had 20 musicians, this has about seven times more than that and it is hardly seven times better and even accounting for less advancements as the numbers increase it isn’t even close to what Arjen accomplished with 20 musicians.

Still, let us not dwell on that and let us also realise that this album is more impressive for its magnitude than for its music but that doesn’t detract from the fact that the music is quite brilliant. I think this is a very strong album, well worth checking out.

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