Marco Polo: The Metal Soundtrack

Symphonity's third album, Marco Polo: The Metal Soundtrack, has the kind of title you'd expect from a band like Rhapsody of Fire, so you can probably guess what you're in for once you plop the needle down (or hit play on your streaming service of choice). At the foundation, this band from the Czech Republic plays fast, melodic and catchy power metal with the story of Venice's Marco Polo providing the lyrical inspiration. Like their last album, King of Persia, Symphonity are not breaking any molds and if you like this kind of metal, you've heard vocal lines, keyboard melodies and guitar arpeggios like these numerous times. That's never been a problem for me, I like those things, but I have some issues with this album. First, there is a narrator that has a LOT of lines and, while I don't normally dig into lyrics very deeply, even for me, he lays out the story in a heavy-handed way. You could almost argue that the band should just have played instrumental music behind the narration. Next is the story, which just isn't all that interesting. Symphonity try to create some emotion by recounting Polo's brushes with death (visiting the Middle East during an outbreak of the black plague, nearly freezing to death crossing the mountains into the Gobi Desert, etc.) but since we all know he got through fine, these tales aren't all that exciting. His journey back from the Far East isn't exactly like Ulysses', either. He gets jailed for a while and must talk his way out of prison and then he's on his way back to Venice where he dies a rich man. Combine a drab story with generic music and intrusive narration and you end up with a power metal album that isn't much fun to sit through.