1. Long Gone
2. From The Magi
3. Your Forever
4. Angelique
5. Hands Of The Devil
6. The Ride to St. Petersburg - Wish Your Horses Well, Battle, Set Us Free

http://artists3.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Manfred_Leidecker/ 

http://www.musicbuilder.com/Avalon/ 

www.fractalrecords.net 

This Canadian band formed in 1975 as a 5-piece hard rock band. After a period of intense touring and rehearsal, the band was signed to London Records a year later. They released their first album, Voice Of Life, in early 1977. The band toured to support the release, developing a ever more bizarre live show (exploding mannequins with flashpots in their heads, flames rising from lead singer Myles Hunter's hands and a host of other antics). The band disbanded in 1979.

The band reunited several times during the 80's leading to the recording on the material on this album in 1990/1991, which had first been written and performed in the late 70's. The band are possibly planning to record more material and perform live in the future.

Avalon's style reflects the time in which the music was written - the late 70s. Back then we weren't so hung up on pigeonholing music. The band combined hard rock, pomp. metal and progressive rock and yet managed to appeal to a broad rock audience. These days I'm sure the band would have selected to appeal to one sub-genre of rock. If Avalon were starting up right now I imagine their style might be neo-classical or prog-metal. Anyway, enough theorizing, what does this CD sound like?

In what seems to be  a trend, this is yet another album where the opening track fails to impress me - it seems to take a long time to go nowhere. Thankfully 'From The Magi' is a glorious track which is in total contrast to the opening blunder. In terms of style, it is Dio meets Magnum meets Styx. I think fans of early Magnum would really enjoy this.

'Your Forever' follows on from where 'From The Magi' left off. The Magnum/Styx/Kansas comparison is still valid on this track, with perhaps a little Asia thrown in. Eventually this builds up to a nice instrumental workout towards the end of the track, played a breakneck speed. This instrumental plays out this long track as the vocals never start up again. 'Angelique' is a ballad based on a mixture of acoustic guitar and blues electric guitar. A nice ballad, in the vein of Styx/Yes, that provides the necessary color variation in the material. The track that follows, the uptempo 'Hands Of the Devil', has good instrumental sections, but is hardly essential listening

The final track is a 10 minutes epic called 'The Ride to St. Petersburg' which is performed live. The opening section, 'Wish Your Horses Well', reminds me of Iron Maiden and it is easy to see how this style of music could well have inspired Maiden's epics. Maiden, this time combined with Thin Lizzy, again crop us as a comparison for the instrumental 'Battle' section. The final section, 'Set Us Free', again has vocals.