VELVET THUNDER

There’s no doubt that Between You, God, The Devil And The Dead is a very good album from a very talented set of musicians. Avatarium have set the bar very high for other doom metal albums in 2025.

This sixth Avatarium studio album is the much-anticipated follow-up to the outstanding Death, Where Is Your Sting which was reviewed in these pages back in 2022. That superb release was the first without any input from the group’s founder Leif Edling (of Candlemass fame), and guitarist Marcus Jidell and singer Jennie-Ann Smith had edged away from their doom roots and adopted a more sophisticated and modern sound. This latest opus only partially continues that trend of pushing boundaries because to a certain degree more typical doom elements have returned too (‘This time I wanted more riffs in that classic doomy style’ states Jidell in the press release). To me, this gives the album a bit of a schizophrenic feel to it, but let’s jump in and look at the details.

The opener, Long Black Waves has everything that Avatarium fans adore. After a cursory introduction of three drumbeats, a massively fuzzed riff storms in. Imagine a slowed down and highly distorted version of the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath riff and you’ll get the idea. Unlike the Sabbath riff, there is a powerful organ overlay too, and of course instead of Ozzy, we have Smith’s powerful female (but deep almost masculine) timbre. The quality of Long Black Waves is further highlighted by the fabulous production job – also courtesy of the multi-talented Jidell – which manages to make the song suitably weighty while still ensuring each instrument is crystal clear.

I See You Better In The Dark is one of the two short (circa three minutes) tracks on the album. It’s fast by Avatarium standards and again has some nice organ work. The chorus though lurches off in a different key almost as if the band had cobbled two different songs together. It’s a decent enough song but I was left feeling nostalgic for the title track from The Girl With The Raven Mask in which they nailed this sort of faster format. My Hair Is On Fire has a similar duality. The verses are all reflective piano and deeply emotional vocal delivery, and it’s very impressive, but this is contrasted with a second section dominated by grinding and quite discordant power chords. There’s an equally heavy instrumental break, and all that relentless pummelling of the ears does serve as good preparation for the impact of the remarkable stillness of the last minute which consists of just Smiths drawn out voice over delicate piano.  An awesome finish to an average song.

Lovers Give A Kingdom To Each Other is another example of the fine production with multiple layers of acoustic guitar creating an intoxicatingly rich almost flamenco-style tapestry. The song seems to meander along without much structure apart from returning now and then to the memorable vocal hook line (‘The heart wants what the heart wants’). Jidell’s bluesy electric guitar solo caps the song in a wonderfully restrained style too. For me, this is the standout track on the album along with Long Black Waves.

For anyone buying the vinyl version, the above four tracks form Side 1. They are four songs that are very different stylistically and yet they are all instantly identifiable as Avatarium. Side 2 is equally varied too, although to these ears, it fails to maintain the same level of quality. Being With The Dead introduces another fuzzed doom riff which is solid if not memorable. After a good deal of subtlety and class up to this point, Being With The Dead felt like a disappointing return to the A-B-C of doom. The only thing that grabbed my attention in the song was the rising guitar phrase because of its similarity to a Blue Öyster Cult song (fans will recognise it instantly so I won’t spoil the fun!)

Until Forever And Again is not that different from Being With The Dead in style but it’s another beast in terms of quality. Here, the riff is more agile and likely to get your feet tapping, and Smith’s melodies are far superior. ‘This is the end, until forever and again’ bemoans Smith in another lament about the human condition. There again, she’s well qualified to sing about that subject since her day job is a psychotherapist. Smith comments: ‘I meet a lot of patients who deal with death anxiety, so it’s part of my everyday life, and these questions are constantly in my mind. It’s great to be able to connect with others through these deep and sometimes very difficult questions through music. That’s an amazing thing’. Well, it certainly beats the worn-out Satanic topics that one finds too often in this genre, and it does mark Avatarium out as a ‘serious’ band. 

Notes From Underground is the second short track on the album, and the notes in question in the title are not intended as written words but musical notation since this is an instrumental.  It’s basically an excuse for Jidell to play a few licks and a few riffs. Very pleasant but not essential listening. In 2019’s The Fire I Long For, the album closes with a gorgeous ballad called Stars They Move, and I thought they were going to repeat the trick here as the title track kicks off with a very slow-paced and deeply moving vocal from Smith. The spell is broken though by the gradual introduction of percussion and guitar and a quite strident solo. If that had grown into an epic finale then all fair and good, but that doesn’t happen, and I was left feeling that they might have done better just letting Smith’s vocals weave their magic alone with the piano. That would have made for a magnificent ballad to close matters. There’s no doubt that Between You, God, The Devil And The Dead is a very good album from a very talented set of musicians. Avatarium have set the bar very high for other doom metal albums in 2025. However, if you sense a little disappointment in this review then that’s because it seems to me to be a slightly backward step from Death, Where Is Your Sting, looking back towards their doom roots more than pushing into newer territory.