REBIRTH WORLD TOUR

Finally a proper live album from ANGRA, six years after the relative disappointment of (the too short) "Holy Live" comes the "REBIRTH TOUR" double disc, recorded as the cover reads "live in Sao Paulo". It's a great opportunity to listen to the new line up live. I have to say that the overall performance is by far tighter than the one from the Matos/Mariutti/Confessori line up on the "Holy Live" album.

Despite his young age, new bassist Felipe Andreoli sounds solid and pounding, just the way a good rock bass player must sound. New drummer Aquiles Priester does an impressive drum solo, after quoting the opening of the Judas Priest song "Painkiller" and some rather standard drum soloing he begins to play some Brazilian rhythms and particularly from 3:01 to 3:15 he sounded like two drummers playing together, that was good...

Regarding new singer Edu Falaschi, he shows to be a more than capable replacement for Andre Matos, personally I prefer Matos' voice and style, but I couldn't overlook the good job Falaschi did throughout this live record, he shines on all the "Rebirth" songs and makes the "Matos" songs his very own. Replacing a loved frontman is the toughest task on earth for a musician and Edu Falaschi succeeded. Not much to say about guitarists Rafael Bittencourt and Kiko Lureiro, they form a guitar team in the same ranks of Smith/Murray and Tipton/Downing.

I am not very fond of the "Rebirth" album, personally I would have preferred more songs from "Holy Land" but that is a minor complaint as I admit that the setlist is a good mix of the "Matos" material with the newer stuff. In my opinion the only weak point of this record is the unnecessary presence of the cover of Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast", Angra has plenty of original material for a live record, they don't need to cover someone else's music to complete a setlist, what is more the rendition of that song adds absolutely nothing to the original, in other words it is a filler.

This is such a great document of Angra live, but honestly hardly anything from this live album I could call prog-rock, in turn what we have here is some of the best heavy metal of the 90's. I'd always recommend the "Holy Land" album for it has most of the progressive material Angra has written.

So 3 stars for a progressive record and 4 stars for a heavy metal record. A must have for any Angra fan.