?Classics? of power metal #16: ASCENSION - Under The Veil Of Madness (2023), revisited

Past exposure to this artist/album:  I am already familiar with Under The Veil Of Madness.

 

 

I got confused back in 2023 when I first heard this record.  I did know that I was impressed.  This was before I was a blogger, but I did do annual rankings for friends, and I ended up ranking it as my #10 record of the year.  The thing that threw me was that my first impression was the record's heft.  Veil seemed like serious big kid metal, heavyweight stuff.  Yet, when I read reviews, even those who liked it a lot tended to emphasize, often in a positive tone, the cheesiness.  The excesses.  The melodrama.  The, well, power-metaliness of the whole thing.

 

Listening with that in mind, I could hear it, and get why others might consider Ascension cheesy.  My ears don't, and never have, heard them that way.  Why was power metal such silly shit, but this power metal not, to Benjamin?  You could say that this record was one of my motivations to try to explore power metal.  I wanted to figure out why this subgenre did sometimes have the, well, power I wanted, whilst still sounding distinctly like the often excessive and often silly tunes I was used to associating with power metal.

To explain what I'm hearing, just listen to opening track "Sayonara."  Super-fast riffs are used to frame a strong cheery guitar melody.  This provides the opening for vocalist Richard Carnie to throw a lot of words into a strong cheery vocal melody.  He doesn't go histrionic all the time, only when it calls for it, otherwise sticking in a pleasant clean pop range, making it impossible to miss the darkness of the lyrics.  At around 3:25, before the traditional guitar solo, the guys first give us a propulsive cycling between three notes that quickly spirals out of control, like the songs' narrators' minds, serving as an arresting interlude, especially when capped with a brief quality whoa-oh-oh vocal bridge.  Even if that's then followed by a less memorable solo, presumably from virtuoso axeman Frasier Edwards, we're quickly back to that killer chorus, complete this time with a full on pop key change and final punctuated chord to sell the triumph of, uh, murdering someone as an expression of love.  "Sayonara" is an exciting song overall!

Part, but only part, of the appeal, is the juxtaposition of standard power metal motifs with lyrics about killing people.  Now, it's not as though thousands of artists, including within metal, haven't presented disturbing lyrics in a happy sounding way before.  That certainly one of the immediate grabby things about Under The Veil Of Madness, though.  Maybe it's a gimme to use the language of power metal to sell a character's racing manic thoughts and joy in destruction... but if it were that easy, you'd think it'd be more common.  Richard completely commits to the bit, using moments of lack of restraint in a restrained way to sell conviction.  I'd call it an excellent theatrical performance that has the "off" button that some similar vocalists lack.  Returning to Veil for the first time since 2023, it's a pleasure to get reacquainted with these fist-pumping hooks that're as good as I remember.  "Let my defiance be known!"  They stay memorable not only because of the long, lyrical phrases - which also help! - but the triumph with which Richard sings something like "this task is unto me to take life away from thee, and set you free" (from "Set You Free") the way a lesser band would sing about heroically slaying a dragon.  I buy that the killer is totally convinced that he's the hero.  I buy that he takes comfort in the idea of death's embrace on "Last Winter's Night."  The musical language of power metal is perfect for this story.

Veil has its share of poppiness in its DNA, in a good way.  For most of the record, Ascension stick with the standards.  Two verses, bridge, solo, final chorus with or without a third verse, with liberal use of the aforementioned key change.  (What can I say, I remain as always a sucker for a good key change.)  Still, these incredibly catchy songs keep revealing themselves as more interesting than at first blush, rewarding repeat listens.  First of all, there are the bells and whistles - piano bridges that sound like funhouse mirror versions of "The Entertainer," the occasional big choral soundscapes like on the intro to "Monsters," and so on.  Generally, the keys and such are used selectively for emphasis.  But underneath the melodic stuff, it also sounds like there's always a few unexpected notes, pleasantly off the beat.  They know how to mix staccatos into a run of legato in a way that doesn't jar.  

As usual for a newer band with a low pop culture footprint I'm not always sure who's doing what.  I really hope I'm not crediting the wrong person for singing again!  But I believe that Nick Blake is the bassist, and that Stuart Docehrty is the second guitarist who does mostly rhythm stuff.  The "rhythm" stringed instruments only occasionally jump to the surface from time to time, yet every time I try to focus on that part of the band's soundscape, they're doing cool things that make the music sing.  So, I bet if I could dissect the songs more, I'd find that that's where a lot of the fun comes from.

Towards the end of Veil, Ascension indulge their proggier instincts a little more.  It's hard to get mad at the nine-plus minute "Last Winter's Night" for consisting mostly of endless instrumental noodling, when every individual part sounds so damn good.  Most delightful is when they go full theatrical in the second half of "Under The Veil Of Madness," creating a courtroom scene* that evokes the obvious comparison to Pink Floyd's "The Trial" except somehow even more excessive.  How can one's blood not pump in that distinctly metal way as Richard proclaims, music speeding up to match the excitement, why the jury needs to support our hero's grand slaughter? 

Nitpicks?  I guess the record is a little long and a little much for one sitting.  I wish there were a little more intertextuality and narrative between the songs.  Is the person declaring independence from his demons the same one succumbing to them?  What's the progression?  Is this an Angus McSix situation of the narrative being presented out of order in the name of musical flow?  Mostly, a little more of a throughline would be nice, like if the "pages of gold" were mentioned more often in the early tracks, or if songs other than the closer reused each other's musical motifs.  Or hell, maybe they could indulge in their theatre kid excesses more.  Imagine an Avantasia-style "metal opera" from Ascension, bringing in like three or four other vocalists to trade off parts!  They're one of the few bands that I think could absolutely stand to go more grandiose than they already do.

All in all, Under The Veil Of Madness remains an exciting direction for power metal.  Framing it in the context of the rest of my ?Classics? Of Power Metal, Veil stands out as one particular extrapolation of some of the best parts of what Helloween, Rhapsody, and Judicator do, mixed into something singular and, yeah, just awesome.  As someone who knows way more about power metal than I did a year and a half ago, I'm confident in that assessment.

Other rambles:

Rather than starting with phylogeny and classification, I decided to save that for the end this time.  But it's worth asking whether, despite my self-proclaimed knowledge above, my enjoyment of Veil might be colored by the fact that it's more new-to-me than it'd be to a longtime power metal devotee.  I'm missing at least one key evolutionary step between Rhapsody and Ascension.  Possibly more than one, but the one I'm specifically thinking of is DragonForce.  I come in with an inherent bias against DragonForce, based entirely on having originally heard of them as the band that a bunch of video game nerds really, really, wanted to get into their Guitar Hero games along with the actual rock legends.  A metal band whose big thing is playing really fast, a band that'd call themselves fucking "Dragonforce," a band whose big song is called "Through The Fire And Flames?"  That does not sound like music for anyone who isn't an eleven-year-old boy; count me out!  

Obviously, though, regardless of whether or not I myself chose to listen to them in the mid-2000s, DragonForce went on to become one of the cornerstones of one of the newer strains of power metal, a more-is-more style that I'm calling "maximalist power metal" because I don't know if it has another name.**  But I figure they're important based on the exhaustive research of knowing that Fraser Edwards, specifically - his eponymous band seems to have basically the same members as Ascension, including the singer - went lightly viral once for a cheeky song called "Stop Saying We Sound Like Dragonforce."  

Listening to DragonForce a little bit, I certainly hear basically all of the elements present in Veil.***  Blistering speed added to songs built around straightforward melodic choruses, frequently embellished with synths and choral vocals but always as a garnish rather than a focus.  I do want to be clear that this isn't a complete review - I literally listened to like five of their more popular songs, once apiece.****  But on first blush, DragonForce seem way less interesting than Ascension.  I get exhausted listening to DragonForce songs.  Much messier, both in production and composition, compared to the clean distinct melody lines from the Ascension record.  Much fewer immediate flags demanding my attention.  I do think that Veil would still be an exciting record to me if I were more familiar with the maximalist PM that it's copying.

Back to Ascension: I get that there are other more important lines, but I wish they could have found a way to name the title track "Murder Philanthropist."  Seems like a wasted opportunity when you've got that lyric.

Favorite track:  "Under The Veil Of Madness"

Runner up:  "Defiance"

Least favorite track:  "Megalomaniac"

Rating:  4.5/5

Will I come back to Ascension?

They don't have much discography to dig into, so that depends on what they release int the future.

Things I learned about power metal:

- The reason Under The Veil Of Madness isn't like anything else I've heard isn't because they're a super-original band so much as because they live in one of the pockets of power metal that's just unfamiliar to me.

- Speaking as someone who thinks that less is often more, more can be more in power metal... but all of the stars have to align.

Next:  Project wrap-up post, whenever I get around to it!

*maybe presaged by the use of the word "trial" in "Monsters," which is the sort of thing I wish the record did more often as discussed further in a few paragraphs.

**They apparently prefer the term "extreme power metal," to the point of calling one of their records Extreme Power Metal.  However, my understanding is that The Culture has decided that this term refers to power metal that incorporates elements of the so-called extreme metal subgenres.  So, bands like Manticora, rather than bands like DragonForce.

***Plus I guess more Metallica worship, given not only a few light thrash riffs here and there, but the fact that of the random songs I sampled, multiple tracks included the lyric "smashing through the boundaries."

****But that's like half an hour of my time given song lengths!  I bleed for this blog!