Dynazty – Final Advent
Release Date: 26th August 2022
Label: AFM Records
Order
Stream
Genre: Melodic Power Metal
FFO: Amaranthe, Rhapsody of Fire, Avantasia.
Review By: Kira L. Schlechter
Let’s face it, golden-throated Nils Molin could sing the alphabet and I’d listen — his voice is that compelling. But all that talent would ring hollow without solid songwriting to back it up, and his band Dynazty has it — pairing his impressive vocabulary, turns of phrase, and sharp observations with his cohorts’ gloriously sticky melodies.
Fronted by Molin and featuring guitarists Love Magnusson and Mikael Lavér, bassist Jonathan Olsson, and drummer Georg Härnsten Egg, Dynazty has released its eighth album, “Final Advent.” That’s a rather contradictory title, as “advent” means the beginning of something. So is this to say the Swedes have established their sound, their mission, with this album, this “final beginning,” as it were?
It certainly seems so with the way the opening track “Power Of Will” blasts out of the gate, all self-confidence and swagger – they are, after all, power metal’s philosophers of positivity. An urgent keyboard melody is the touchstone throughout, starting and ending the track and introducing the modulated final chorus. This is a declaration, to “burn down the past,” to “want the truth to just be mine,” to “be afraid no more.” Healing has been done – “I’ve seen the bridge over all grief/it’s the power of belief” – and we now have the tools to return to that point should despair befall us again (“I know the way out of the dark/I hold the compass in my heart”). Dynazty’s trademark has to be their brilliant choruses, bold and catchy and lacking cliché, as here: “I am here/I’m awake/’Cause this world is mine to take/Through the power of will I’ll find my still again” (“still” is such a nice way to say peace of mind, or centeredness, or whatever you wish to call it). After dueling solos from Love and Mikeal (as usual, just enough, always respecting the context of the song), there’s a spoken bridge where Nils reasserts his determination (“My will’s made of stone/It’s infused to the bone”) before one more run through the chorus.
Notable throughout is the album’s conciseness; nothing is wasted or overstayed. They’ve cut back on the number of tracks (“The Dark Delight” had 13 tracks, this 10) and the length of each as well – it is, as Nils has vowed it in the album bio, “no fillers, all killers.”
The completely irresistible swing of “Advent” made it an immediate personal favorite and I still can’t get enough of that chunky fat bounce, or the way Nils spits out the rapid-fire verses (maybe he took a cue from his former Amaranthe bandmate Henrik Englund “GG6” Wilhelmsson for that), or the way the chorus just bursts free with its message of self-determination (“Let your reflection shine bright like a star/Let the world know who you really are/You have the power to choose what will be/When our true nature’s unleashed then we’re free”). The first verse is a vow to make life changes after maybe having screwed up a little (“This is the first step to my last breath as a common depravity/You can go far betting it all on pure will and sheer audacity”) and vowing to “Redo, renew, remake reality” and “reject what is defected and to finally be complete.” The second is knowing you’ve gotten there: “Unbent, unbowed, you claim your destiny/Become the voice making the choice/Become who you were born to be.” The album title comes into play with the observation, “the final advent is a life spent in your true natural state” – going back to the beginning in order to go on. That shambling bassy breakdown (thank you, Jonathan), where Nils’ wail leads seamlessly into the first part of the Love/Mikael solo (which then gets so cheery and optimistic you’d have to be a Scrooge not to like it), is a gritty little change-up before they rear back and launch into a modulated, deconstructed last chorus. Nils’ final rasp of “free” caps it off on a defiant note.
By its very subject matter, “Natural Born Killer” has a darker feel and rightly so; as Nils said, it’s about “the dangers of blindly obsessing about and idealizing another person” (take that as you will; it’s nicely ambiguous). Keyboards on the chorus melody introduce a more ominous feel as Nils describes the start of this obsession, as one character tempts the other to “Come too close to the flame/And let it burn away the empty within you/Have me your one shining turn/Your bridge between hope and despair.” The second verse is even more insistent: “Make your way to me, your priority … Once you’re in you’ll become complete/Have me be the savior of all.” But because “Only perfection can be true,” “One mistake and now you must hate me/For breaking the spell within you” – that is, the illusion is shattered when the perfect person becomes imperfect. The lilting chorus is basically saying this is only human, a “natural-born tendency,” and that “there is a thin line between what is love, is hate, and pure insanity.”
Taken in the context of the album, “Yours” might actually be a very nice segue from “Natural Born Killer.” The aching ballad seems to touch a bit on obsession as well, the inevitability of memories of a past someone coming back to haunt you (“Through my inner noise/I heard that voice again”) – someone described with just one tender line, “Fierce, but delicate and frail.” The second verse describes the remembered encounter – “My defense broke as she spoke/Only in physical but so unforgettable” – and how he was forever changed: “And how my heart sang true that day/Strong and finely tuned/I came through/To the essence of truth,” finding the spiritually transcendent in the physical. The breaks in Nils’ voice, the few little moments of imperfection, convey the emotion so perfectly. The almost baroque guitar solo preceding the actual solo on the chorus melody is a beautiful moment of transition. The chorus, which comes after almost an in-held breath, is just sublime – it’s helpless, it’s poignant, it’s again inevitable – “They rise/Memories through noise/The sound of a voice/Leaving me with no choice” – and Nils is so adept at making you feel the desperation, the resignation. On the final one, his descant on the melody breaks your heart – if it isn’t already broken. And I don’t like ballads, dammit…
“All The Devils Are Here” bears a slight resemblance sonically (tempo-wise, a bit with the insistent main melody) to “Heartless Madness” from “The Dark Delight.” It’s kind of a three-part little story of a dangerous, perhaps ill-considered personal relationship: the first is rather Nils saying oh what the hell, sure (“I wanna burn with a raging passion/I wanna feel the taste of something real”), knowing it’s not the greatest idea in the world (“I know I should stay clear/It’s true, it’s just as I fear/All the devils are here”). The second is his fears being realized (“We come alive in a dance of madness/You satiate when I feast upon your hate/We’re the other’s fatalistic fate”) and he admits, “I curse the day we met/But I’m in too deep to regret/Now all the devils are set.” And the gentler bridge is him realizing that this turmoil they share is actually a good thing (“‘Cause still life can live within/Two hearts shaped by revenge”) and learning to accept it (“If mad right from the start/Let madness free our hearts”). The chorus separating the sections of the story is a longing for some kind of feeling, good or bad: “If that is love, I’d rather have your hate.” It’s an interesting little journey.
“The White” is the final part of the trilogy that began with “The Grey” (2018’s “Firesign”) and continued with “The Black” (“The Dark Delight”). So where the first song is the honeymoon stage, if you will, of “this treacherous romance,” and the second is discovering that person’s true colors (so to speak), that “you are no longer colored in shades of grey” and are “in fact all through pitch black,” the conclusion is finding peace and resolution – “black and grey are turning into shining light white.” Musically, it’s shaking off the anger of “The Black” and its chorus kind of echoes that of that track. Thematically it’s kind of ruminating, playing off contrasts – “A still can suddenly erupt into motion” and “A place of beauty and joy turning into darkness” in the first verse – and making some thoughtful observations, like ‘A stone can shine just like a diamond if you polish it right” and “A soul can shine just like the sun if you look at it right.” Ultimately, it’s realizing that all three nuances exist together and that’s OK: “Where there is light there is dark emotion.”
Fading in with some creepy, carnival-like keyboards, “Instinct” is actually narrated by that concept, the personification of instinct, if you will, urging the listener to “Tell me what you want and I’ll show you what you need” and to “Take me to the realms of your darkest fantasy,” that “you can live it all if you give yourself to me.” The chorus is a siren call to pure indulgence: “Get your bad side out” and “Indulge in your favorite dark delight” (in a nice bit of self-reference) and “Frantic frenzy, indulge in me.” There’s a few clever lyrical nods to, of all things, Judas Priest’s “Eat Me Alive” (intended or no) in innuendo-laden lines like “Feast down to the bone as I give and you collect/Relish in the now as the potency injects.” The music runs as counterpart, making all this wallowing in decadence sound almost like a necessary release, rather than something of which to be ashamed.
Another ear candy melody is at the heart of “Heart Of Darkness” and its first verse is a pointed bit of self-criticism: “I walk the line/Moral chasms on every side/I navigate the nightmare of my choice” (how hard it is to be good sometimes). And when you make the wrong choice, you beat yourself up – “I know I should confess/I feel a little less/Every time that I give in to my weakness.” The second is more outward, like a why-bother-anyway: “I turn against the world/I’d rather see it burn/Why should I give when I receive so little/A good deed will soon be gone/While the evil it lives on.” The chorus seems to bemoan our need for immediate gratification (“We wanna feel it, we wanna taste it/We wanna take this life to the limit”) and how that makes us less virtuous (“Alone inside the heart of darkness/It beats in all of us/And I know what it does/Bringing our worst to the surface”). And the bridge serves as a warning – no matter how much you “blame the world for all I’ve done” and “can’t face what I’ve become,” “the dark will soon be here/All light will disappear/If I won’t change.”
A slower, more grinding tempo and a liquidy Middle Eastern guitar melody make “Achilles Heel” a late-album standout. Its title is pretty self-explanatory, when you’ve “suffered defeat” – or come up against “the spoke in my wheel,” in a lovely and vivid turn of phrase – and realize you’re not as strong as you thought you were. But the self-pity gives way to acceptance in a mantra-like bridge that puts it all in perspective: “What we are, what we’ve been/What we will ever be is how we feel/What we do, and how we will choose to see/Where we go, what we find, what we will leave behind/Is how we choose to define the journey within our mind.” Sonically and in its message, it’s a special track.
The optimistic closer (and bookend to the opener) “Power Of Now” is, of course, an ode to living in the moment – “the journey’s in the here and now,” “the power’s in the here and now” – and that we are the masters of our destiny, that “The answer lives within/Not where you’ll go or where you’ve been/We hold the world within our hands.” Perhaps the best bit is the couplet, “The fleeting moments last/Locked within our future past/The here and now is in our hands” – the present is all we have control over, after all.
So what really sets Dynazty apart from the rest of the power metal pack – as “The Final Advent” establishes so solidly – is its eschewing of the subgenre’s usual topics in favor of self-examination, of pondering what it means to be human, with all our foibles and flaws. And yeah, OK, they sound really, really good doing it. 
(5 / 5)
