MEDEN AGAN – Catharsis

Symphonic Metal mainstays Meden Agan return with a new album Catharsis and new female vocalist Dimitra Panariti, their third lead in a span of four albums. It is hard to imagine other veins of Metal enduring a revolving door of singers, as it often results in what is essentially a completely different band sound, but Symphonic Metal, perhaps because of grand-scale collectives like Ayreon and Avantasia, weathers line-up changes perhaps better than other sub-genres. Difference here is that Dimitra is not a pure soprano like her predecessors and signs in a lower register during most of the songs, sailing high predominantly on the choruses.

Meden Agan (a Greek phrase meaning “nothing in excess”) plays a hard-hitting style of Symphonic Metal, less airy than many of their contemporaries, with heavy guitar riffs and rapid rhythmic patterns, making Dimitra in many ways a more appropriate vocalist for their sound. The first single from the album “Cleanse Their Sins” is a good example of this, beginning with a circular piano trill, driving beat, and chanted Greek phrases before the lead vocal comes in, starting low and then climbing higher as the tension of the song builds. She sounds like a ghost haunting a forlorn castle in songs like “Whispers In The Dark”, her voice moving in and out of the sonic structures the musicians create around her. She can do edgy as well as ethereal, such as on “The Purge” and closer “Weaver of Destiny”, where she not only trades lead vocals with bassist Aris Nikoleris but also adds some sinister sounding hissed phrases.

Fans of the many incarnations of Nightwish or Epica will be glad they gave Catharsis a listen.

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