Veonity – The Final Element
Release Date: 18th October 2024
Label: Scarlet Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Power Metal
FFO: Edguy, Gamma Ray, Hammerfall, Helloween, Twilight Force.
Review By: Eric Wilt
I was recently reading a social media post from Avantasia’s Tobias Sammet, about how people are always wanting him to return to his power metal heyday, to make music like that which is found on Edguy’s Hellfire Club and Avantasia’s Metal Opera. He has famously stayed far away from that particular style of power metal for nearly twenty years, and as a huge fan of those albums, that has always bummed me out. While I’m not here to tell you about Tobi’s return to the power metal of yore, I am here to tell you about the next best thing. Veonity is a power metal band from Sweden, who play up-tempo heavy metal with soaring vocals, blazing solos, thundering bass, and pounding drums, and after a couple of times through their latest full length, The Final Element, I was left asking myself Tobi who?
In all seriousness, the only problem I have with Veonity is that they’ve been releasing music since 2015, and I’m only finding out about them now. From the opening riff of Chains of Tyranny and the falsetto vocal lead-in, you can tell that Veonity was brought up on a steady diet of Helloween, Gamma Ray, Edguy, etc. The riffs come fast and furiously, the double bass is practically perpetual, and the choruses are big and catchy. The lyrics are as epic as you’d expect and tell a saga of a hero that needs to seal the veil between the Overworld and the Underworld to prevent darkness from gaining control. In addition to the Chains of Tyranny, which is an incredible opening track, there are a number of other songs that standout on the album. Carry On opens with a gloriously melodic riff and a majestic dual solo that gets the song going in the right direction, while the track’s chorus is easy to sing along to and hard to forget. Powerstone is another barnburner that will get your horns high in the air and is a perfect vessel for new singer Isak Stenvall to show off his range. The final song, The Fifth Element, is perhaps the best song on the album, as it gives guitarists Anders Sköld and Samuel Lundström one more opportunity to show off their fretboard pyrotechnics. Not to mention the way bassist Kristoffer Lidre and drummer Joel Kollberg effortlessly hold down the rhythm section.
There is one good thing about my recently finding out about Veonity, they’ve got quite a back catalog for me to listen to. And after spending the last couple of weeks with The Final Element, you can be sure I will. Veonity is playing some of the best power metal I’ve heard lately, and they definitely deserve to have a place beside the genre’s greats like Helloween, Gamma Ray, and Edguy.
(4 / 5)
