sully erna avalon

Released: 01 November 2010 Label: Spinefarm

Taken in isolation, track two from this album is perhaps the song of the last twelve months. Seven Years creates an intriguing and adventurous landscape of reflective musical moods, dark textures and rich, powerful vocals courtesy of Godsmack mainman Sully Erna and Lisa Guyer.

But Avalon is no one trick pony. Throughout the ten tracks on his debut solo album, Erna provides many highlights. The voice is familiar of course, but this album is so much more than Godsmack unplugged.

Minus any studio trickery and without a full on rock band behind him, Erna proves himself to be a massively accomplished vocalist, his voice oozing pain and passion as he strips bare his soul over a series of beautifully crafted and plaintive torch songs. The almost wholly acoustic instrumentation and additional vocals from the aforementioned Guyer are equally impressive.

Every track has its merits and all display a quite beautiful fragility, but remain underpinned by a remarkable sense of power and confidence. Erna has never sounded this assured.

Broken Road is the epic spaghetti western ballad Metallica would have loved to have written around the time of Load. Elsewhere, The Rise and Sinner’s Prayer channel the magickal mysticism of Led Zeppelin while the title track taps into the dark splendour of early Pearl Jam.

However, singling out individual tracks is almost churlish, because as a whole Avalon stands as a pretty damn faultless body of work from start to finish.

A surprise package and a resounding success. Make some room on your albums of the year list, because Avalon is about to barge its way on there.

by Marcus Jervis