I always go into a Timo Tolkki album with high hopes. Even after his awkward phase with Revolution Renaissance and Symfonia, I still look forward to his releases with an undeserving giddiness that I should really shed already. Even after the mediocre debut album, The Land of New Hope, I still followed the reveals of the sophomore album, Angels of the Apocalypse, with a hawk’s eye. Just the prospect of the likes of Floor Jansen, Fabio Lione, and Simone Simons had me watering and drooling all over myself, but much like the debut album, this one feels like a huge missed opportunity.

Tolkki’s songwriting has taken a huge hit in the past decade. I don’t know if Stratovarius’ Johansson or Kotipelto had anything to do with it, but all Tolkki’s solo and side project albums have either suffered from mediocrity or redundancy; Angels of the Apocalypse is no exception. The first half of the album does feature some of the better instances of compelling compositions, though. “Jerusalem is Falling” and “The Paradise Lost” are both played out with a fervency that sticks out on this album. The first’s heavy symphonic utilizations is on-par with Rhapsody’s proficiency at symphonic masterpieces, and the latter features some signature keyboard melodies that harken back to “Eagleheart”, perhaps, from Stratovarius. Quite fittingly, these two songs also contain the most fitting and appropriate vocals in the album, with both Floor Jansen and Fabio Lione delivering in strides, something that can’t be said for some of the other tracks.

The biggest problem I have with this whole release is the utter bore it can be. “Design the Century”, the single from the album, is so obviously written to be accessible that it comes off as a carbon copy of “Enshrined in My Memory”, the debut album’s single. Not to mention that the poor songwriting that’s scattered elsewhere on the album really provide no backdrop for the guest vocalists to shine. The amount of talent that is on this album is not proportionate to the album’s quality.

The best example of this is “Rise of the 4th Reich”, where David DeFeis gives us his completely monstrous mimicry of Virgin Steele’s past glory, and it falls short spectacularly. The vocals sound strained and uninspired, much like the songwriting, and ultimately Tolkki’s best solo on the album can’t save this song from being an absolute trainwreck.

Speaking of trainwrecks, the last half of the album is so incredibly bland and tedious that there’s no doubt in my mind that these were all filler tracks. The two ballads on the album, “You’ll Bleed Forever” and “High Above of Me” never actually get to a point where any kind of emotion is felt, and it’s not until the 9-minute title track epic of the album comes in at the very end of the disc to salvage the wreckage of the past few songs. The finale is actually quite captivating with a myriad of progressions and symphonic movements that actually leave me with a very confused perception of Tolkki’s current abilities.

The neoclassical-tinged power metal of the Tolkki of yore is entirely gone on Angels of the Apocalypse, and instead he opts for a symphonic bombast that even the likes of Rhapsody of Fire and Nightwish have difficulty summoning. Much like the debut, Angels of the Apocalypse suffers greatly from the mediocre-to-dreadful compositions and the underutilization of some of the greatest voices in all of metal today. I’d have difficulty recommending this to anyone, for there are so many bands that do this style of supergroup power metal in a much superior fashion that Timo Tolkki has proven he can’t match. I hope he can one day release an album to prove me wrong, whether it is symphonic or neoclassical, but for now it looks like Tolkki has lost the drive and passion for creating great music.