ALBUM REVIEW: War Of The Jewels – Ainur

AINUR’s ambitious attempt to reimagine Tolkien’s Silmarillion has reached its ninth chapter in War Of The Jewels. In the 17 years since the band started this project, never have they had such a long creative process as War Of The Jewels. A project that has been ongoing since 2009, and across 12 years has morphed into a huge story – much like Tolkien’s work. This time focussing on the War for the Silmarils (for the layman, the Silmarils were jewels of great power, and essentially precursors to The One Ring from Lord of The Rings), and AINUR have attempted to channel the aggression of the fantasy war, alongside taking clear inspiration from classic fantasy film scores – themselves citing John Williams as an inspiration.

Featuring spoken word pieces by Ted Nasmith, the record reaches airy highs reminiscent of Rivendell and the elves, before the introduction of guitars more than halfway through the second song Wars of Beleriand to signal the aggression and clash of battle. Of course this record aims to take the listener on the journey, much like the original Tolkien novels set in Middle-Earth, and it certainly achieves that. Dynamic sonic atmospheres are the name of the game, and AINUR excel at creating ebbs and flows in the music that play with the listener’s emotion.

However the record as a whole does feel far more like a soundtrack than a standalone album. Whilst it is understandably influenced by fantasy media, there is a bit more that the band could have done to make this feel more like a record highly influenced by the war for the Silmarils, rather than one that simply soundtracks the events going on. Snippets of this album would work excellently as a soundtrack to Amazon’s upcoming Lord Of The Rings series, but as a standalone piece of art it feels rather lacking in any identity of its own.

Influence is important in music, and whilst many bands claim influence from multiple different forms of media, the most successful of those take that inspiration and make it their own, a distinct entity from the initial idea. AINUR however, seem to go the entire other direction, which unfortunately makes it impossible to really see their own take on the events, as it really does feel like a soundtrack for a film that was never made. Understandably this is hard to avoid when essentially writing about a single piece of work (albeit one of the longest and most complex books ever written), but it feels like some more obscuration of their influence and perhaps more use of metaphor could’ve really given this record more artistic merit of its own.

Having said that, they do tell Fëanor’s story well, and massive fans of Tolkien’s work will recognise the key events from various songs, as well as the emotional resonance when the band employ the full range of instrumentation available to them. There are 13 members of AINUR, and that’s not even including guest features Ted Nasmith, Derek Sherinian and Roberto Tiranti so it is to be expected that this album sounds like a score all in itself, as AINUR act essentially as their own orchestra.

Whilst War of the Jewels is an interesting concept, and certainly would be good fun for major Tolkien fans, it falls short of being a fantastic piece of work on its own merit. It’s for the die-hards rather than the casual fans, but judged alone as a composition of music, it just doesn’t do enough to form its own identity. Nonetheless, on the off chance that anyone involved with Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series is reading this, you should definitely get in touch with AINUR.

Rating: 5/10

War of the Jewels is out now via Rockshots Records.

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