HOLY LAND

Angra

Progressive Metal

4.10 | 248 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

CCVP
Prog Reviewer

Holy Land is Angra's best album with Andr� Matos, but it is not as good as it should be

In Holy Land , Angra partially drops the melodic metal they presented us in their debut entitled Angel's Cry and strives for a complexer sound, a complexer music and they, also, partially achieve it. Merging classical music influences (mostly baroque, which fit the album thematics and concept very well) with brazilian folk music, specially afro-brazilian, indian and caboclo tunes, and Angra's characteristic melodic metal, the band deliver us a much more intricate and better worked album than before.

The instrumental part is very decent and, unlike Angel's Cry, it goes beyond the usual metal instrumentation of guitars - bass - drums - piano / keyboard, mainly because of the folk influences. The guitars follow the basic dual-guitar script: as one guitar does the rhythmic work the other does the soloist work. The bass lines are far from complexity, but they fit very well in the music, supporting the band very well. The drums also do a very good job, but the constant double bass drum in some songs can sometimes be a bit boring and uninspiring. Though The Andr� Matos vocals are good, his pronunciation is far from good, being very hard to understand what he is singing at sometimes, but at least he sings very well and with emotion.

The folk influences can be felt through most of the album in the rhythm, as the rhythm of most of the album tries to emulate brazilian folk tunes listed before. However, that influence can be specially felt in the middle of the album in the songs Carolina IV, Holy Land, The Shaman and Z.I.T.O.

The album concept of the album, put very simply, is about the discovery of Brazil by the europeans and the discovery of its many beauties and diversity.

There are also some cracks through the album, maybe caused by bad recording / mixing / mastering.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Very good album overall. Good instrumental music and good vocals and have an OK concept. I think 4 stars is a good grade for it.

CCVP | 4/5 | 2008-10-9

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