ARYEM Brings Broadway Musicals Into Their Symphonic Metal on "Agnes"

Metal Robot thumbnail for website review of Aryem's "Agnes", due out April 10th

“…some parts that dragged on too long, but the variation kept me engaged throughout…”

“Hey there! Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven? … That’s not a pick up line, you just fell 80,000 ft, I’m checking your vitals!” That’s what I assume would be the first words uttured to our album protagonist the moment she fell.

You see, Aryem’s Agnes is not only the third album from the symphonic metal four-piece from Mexico, it’s also a concept album. When the band’s bass player and main composer Diego Heero Maaginen sent this in as a request, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but here’s how he described the story:

AGNES is a concept album that follows the story of a divine being who comes to earth and slowly learns what it means to feel — love, doubt, sacrifice, and the fragile weight of human dreams. Musically, it blends symphonic metal with many world styles, and with cinematic and emotional storytelling.

Okay, so it’s going to feel varied overall and take me on an emotional tour of the world? Well after listening to the album in full, what I found was this album does that by mixing a style that metal doesn’t often mix with…

From the opening of the intro track “Agnes”, to “Event Horizon”’s whole “Tell me you listen to Nightwish without telling me you listen to Nightwish” vibe, and down into the circus with “Do You Feel Worthless Yet?”, the blend of symphonic metal and story telling creates an interesting sound that will be familiar if you love metal covers of musicals.

Because the style blend I was getting comes straight out of my childhood to the Disney animation renaissance. I’m talking Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, and the likes. Those comparisons don’t hold water here exactly, but “Do You Feel Worthless Yet” brings in cynical tone, mixed with a metallic version of “Friend Like Me” from Aladdin.

Vocally as well, this album does pretty good so far. Karen M-dozza brings that stylistic blend together and makes it work. Even in the obligatory romance part of the story in “In Love With You”. While I felt this song was a bit too paint-by-numbers for my liking, it is still important for the rest of the story as the melodies come back again and again.

And when I say paint-by-numbers, I do mean it. This song, unfortunately, feels like a carbon copy of almost every other mid-tempo symphonic metal song, to the point I can hear the lawyers calling right now (for legal reasons that’s a joke). It’s not bad—to be clear—but I felt this one could’ve been better, especially given its supposed importance to the story.

Thankfully, songs like “Sellout” and “Holding On” keep things going, and still holding onto that metallic broadway soundtrack style. The story around this point takes turns of its own, going from an “Oops! Sold your soul!” to “Oops! Crimpling Depression” as quickly as a Megadeth fan will point out Dave Mustaine wrote Metallica’s best songs unprompted. It’s pretty good stuff! But hold on, it’s not going to flip flop a lot the rest of the album, right? Well the answer becomes pretty clear once we get past “Into Gravity” and beyond.

The band Aryem, featuring all four members — L-R Diego Heero Maaginen, Karen M-dozza, Javier Díaz, Luis Arturo Echegollen

When a band starts to bring in all these different styles, you would hope that the whiplash would subside or at least keep going to keep consistency. But at the halfway point of the album, we get a bit of both. The story is continuing onward, however we’ve left the realm of “metal meets musical theatre” and are going straight-forward symphonic metal.

Not a bad thing mind—I never have any major complaints about that—but the tonal shift is beginning to take effect, and once you realize it’s gone then it’s already too late.

We are still going to find more tonal shifts and transitions into more styles around the world, but first the band will take a pit stop back home in Mexico for “Son del Alma”—translating to “They Are From The Soul” and is the only song on the album that’s in Spanish.

I like how the song brings in Mariachi style songwriting. It helps mold it together into a true style shift while also keeping the symphonic metal identity.

My only issue here is the fact that the language has changed, but the story keeps going. Not a problem if you’re bilingual, but I… being the whitest representation of North American laziness… don’t speak Spanish. So for an entire song, I have no idea what’s happening. Not a problem if you don’t care about the story, but for someone trying to follow along it can present a challenge.

That challenge revealed itself once we got into “Battleground” and all of a sudden, now our deity is no longer in a relationship and is pissed off. I’ve seen soap operas with better transitions than that! What happened?! It’s like you’re listening to “One-Piece” in the background for one episode, then come back to put the subtitles on and an important character died without you knowing.

We also do stick in this “post break-up depression” state with Agnes for a while, continuing into “All That’s Left of Me (Nightflowers)” and “You Won’t Miss Me”. I gotta say, Agnes (our protagonist) has NOT had the best time on Earth. Couldn’t you have come down during the Medieval times instead of the 2020s?

Anyways, the album starts to pick up and close things up with a viking style stomp in “Nefilim” and an epic battle soundtrack in “Not Enough For You”. This all before we close out for real with the song “Lapsi Kuoleman Maailman", which translates from Finnish to “Child of the Death” (I think, idk, it’s Google Translate).

This is also not a bad way to close out the album, ditching the epic metal intensity for more Norse Polka (I wish I was kidding). No idea what happened to Agnes at the end, whether she’s dead or if she’s back with her dad in the cosmos, but I digress. And with that, we do find ourselves in a bit of a bind.

On the one hand, I like how the album went overall, but on the other hand this wasn’t the emotional journey I was personally hoping for. Agnes is a solid and well balanced album. It does a good job balancing the symphonic metal style with other genres from around the world to help tell the story.

But just because it’s well balanced and incorporates all these different styles, the parts where the songs felt paint-by-numbers became a chore to get through at times.

And that’s not helped by the performances. They’re all-around really solid! Karen M-dozza is a super talented vocalist and was (in my opinion) a perfect fit for this story telling style. Diego Heero Maaginen is also a talented composer and writes a lot of good parts. The drums are played well by Luis Arturo Echegollen and Javier Díaz is a really good guitar player when he’s allowed to shine. But even with all of that, there isn’t a lot to write home about instrumentally other than their parts are written well.

Add in a story being hard to follow the longer the album goes on, and a bloated album runtime, and you start to see the problems with the album overall.

So after all of that, does that mean I hate this album?

… ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I am a bit hard on this album, but there was a lot I liked about it! While I was sad to hear the metallic musical theatre style didn’t last, the viking style of symphonic metal they brought in on “Nefilim” was a solid change of pace and added an extra bit of intensity.

Plus, the story I was able to pick up was pretty solid as well. It does make me want to try and figure out the parts I couldn’t pick up initially and see what I’m missing.

Overall, Agnes is well balanced between symphonic metal, musical theatre, circus, Viking, mariachi, everything in between. Despite some parts that dragged on too long, the variation kept me engaged throughout and didn’t allow it to get boring for too long.

I do wish the album allowed all the musicians of Aryem to really show off at times, but I’m fairly satisfied with what we got. If you’re looking for a new symphonic metal band to add to your collection, then you definitely could do WAY worse. I’ll be curious to know if they’ll be telling more stories going forward, and how they could even improve next time. We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, go check out Agnes, and dive into the story.