UNCIVILIZED

"Uncivilized" is the debut full-length studio album by Brazilian progressive metal act Bad Salad. The album was independently released in July 2012. Bad Salad were founded in 2007 by guitarists Thiago Campos and Marcelo Seabra, bassist Felipe Campos, and drummer Caco Goncalves, but struggled for a couple of years to find the last members for the lineup, so it wasn´t until early in 2010 when keyboard player César Zolhof joined the ranks, that the band were able to start searching for a vocalist, who would fit their new more dynamic sound. After a lengthy tryout the band chose Denis Oliveira as their frontman. Unfortunately César Zolhof left Bad Salad again in November 2010, but the band were able to finish recording "Uncivilized" anyway with César Zolhof as a session musician.

The music on the album is what I´d charachterize as "traditional" progressive metal. Traditional is of course quite the contradictionary term to use about a progressive metal album, but in this case it covers the fact that Bad Salad aren´t about to revolutionize the world of progressive metal with "Uncivilized". However what they do deliver here is one hell of a powerful, well performed, well produced, and well written album. They are first and foremost great composers and the tracks are generally very catchy, which is actually quite the achivement considering that all 7 tracks on the 78:28 minutes long album, are between 6 and 15 minutes long, and that most of them are over 10 minutes long. The tracks are very dynamic featuring both heavy riffs, challenging instrumental parts, memorable choruses, skillful keyboard work and strong rythmic playing too. As mentioned above they don´t necessarily play anything you haven´t heard before, but they do what they do damn well...

...the musicianship are outstanding all the way around. The instrumental part of the music is spot on and lead vocalist Denis Oliveira is incredibly skilled. He is able to deliver both smoth/soft styled vocals when that is needed but also some really raw vocals when the music calls for that. He is a great asset to the band´s music.

"Uncivilized" is overall a very convincing debut album by Bad Salad and it would be wrong to just call them promising because these guys are already at the top of their game delivering quality progressive metal to the people. In other words this doesn´t sound like a debut album to my ears, but rather the work of a seasoned band. I´d be very interested to see what these guys are able to create in the future. A 4 - 4.5 star (85%) rating is deserved.