Arven - Music of Light

When you think of Power Metal, you think of Helloween, Blind Guardian, Nightwish, and Edenbridge to name a few, and the scenes in Europe in which festivals like Wacken Open Air in Germany have a huge following of the genre. But when you have a new band coming out of Frankfurt named Arven, they’re probably one of the most newcomers in the Melodic and Power Metal genre to bring the sound to push forward and seeing where the road they’re in will take them into. But there is a bit of Symphonic in their music and their debut album, Music of Light shows they have a huge love of the three genres and while they are Melodic, they really go into the realms of Medieval Tales of the 15th century and inspirations from Books of Fantasies and Lord of the Rings combined as one.

This 6-piece band in which five them are female fronted musicians and one male drummer to put in there, you have a sound of heavy guitar riffs, storming keyboard melodies, militant machine gun-like sounds of the drums, and a touch of classical operatic vocals that proves that this band have got a lot going on. I first heard about this band when I saw a video of their songs on YouTube and after hearing it about three times, I loved it and while I have a love of symphonic metal, this band really knocked me out and I can hear influences of Iron Maiden, Within Temptation’s Sharon Den Adel, and Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force.

Even though the band have gotten a huge road ahead of them, the album is like an explosive dynamite going through five highlights of the album that metal and prog fans need to take notice of. The opening title track goes through a vicious violin solo done by Stefan Gulfer, classical, and sing-along battle cry by fighting to the death as the metallic riffs and melodic piano combine like a shining star as vocalist Carina Hanselmann and guitarists Ines Thome and Anastasia Schmidt sing the vocals and play the guitar between rhythm and lead as if they are Glenn Tipton and Ritchie Blackmore.

Raise Your Cups is a medieval folk-metal/enjoying dance and song that this fast drilling beast sound between flute, guitars, and drums sounding almost like a machine gun going off nowhere that could those different types of the metal genre and give it a huge crunch and make it almost sound like a runaway train going about 600 miles per hour. Elsewhere, the ‘70s sound of Queen II and a metallic version of Blood Ceremony on Dark Red Desire almost has this haunting doom melody with a vicious guitar sound at the moment that these two guitarists show their love of the ‘70s hard rock sound with an attitude.

Then, everything becomes melodic and melancholy with the 7-minute epic, My Dear Friend, which has this grand piano and orchestral sound with the string quartet and ballad-like from the instruments as it deals with the loss of a friend who had their ups and downs and never got the chance to say goodbye and the final highlight is climatic climax closer, A Stranger’s Story. With more of the dueling guitars and Portnoy-like drum keg popping and story-telling complex coming together with a fast paced sound, Arven has proven that they aren’t show-offs, but show a huge contribution to the Melodic Metal sound.

For fans of Nightwish and Amberian Dawn, this is a band that I highly recommend and give it a huge listen. With the touches of Melodic, Symph, and Prog together, Arven are going to be the big thing in the Power and Symphonic Metal community and come out with a bang.