O ARQUITETO

After 18 years waiting for a Studio album (as told by the band itself, Wiermann & Vogel is not so much a Quaterna Requiem album) it was a pleasant surprise to notice that "O Arquiteto" has seen the light of day. It was an old project and some people can see that a few tracks were part of their DVD from 2004, including "Frank LLoyd", that seems to be a version of "Casa de Cascata". I am normally very critic about brazilian prog bands whose quantity is more noteworthy than the quality. But there are 2 bands that are really irreproachable. Bacamarte and Quaterna Requiem are the best bands ever to appear in brazilian prog rock and are in no way behind the best bands of the world. This new release shows they have lost nothing of their old shape. After I bought the CD I listened to it 4 times in a row and I still was not tired of it. There are 4 songs, but the 4th is a long suite that is in fact a reunion of songs very different among themselves mostly named after famous architects separated by small interludes whose names are materials of construction (Stone, Glass, Wood and Concrete). The album in a general way sounds pretty much like "Velha Gravura" and "Quasimodo". As its predecessors the album is very symphonic oriented, dominated by the keyboardist Elisa Wierman, who composed all the songs, with the nice violin of Kleber Vogel embelishing the music at every step (unlike Quasimodo, recorded while Vogel was pursuing his own project, Kaizen). We can see however a stylistic change in songs like Gaudi and Niemeyer, that are maybe of more recent composition, that are somewhat less melodic and rhytmically more complex. Congratulations to Quaterna Requiem for another great work. For the sake of quality prog rock I hope I have not heard the last of them.

Well, I'm a brazilian, and even if I'm not living on the country anymore I always pay attention on the music released by brazilian bands. Specially Progressive Rock bands and artists.

QUATERNA RÉQUIEM is a long love, I'm not a biggest fan, but they always released high quality material in the Symphonic Prog vein and it's been a long time since their previous studio album, the great and epic Quasímodo (1994).

I've heard about this new album, O Arquiteto (2012), more than a years ago, was a really slow birth to the band, but here it is, a conceptual album that deals, like the name says, with the Architects and their works.

As one would expect from the band, Symphonic Prog is all the way through with pianos, violinos and keyboards, and we can notice on the first track 'Preludium' and also on the second 'Mosaicos' with its piano, acoustic classical guitar by Roberto Crivano and keyboards layers.

From time to time I must confess that I felt that the sounds are a bit cheese here and there, sometimes they do bother my audition of the album, like in the case of some keyboards and specially in the bass tone, too low sometimes and sometimes sounds too much 'amateur'. But in the cases of the violins they're terrific, Kleber Vogel does an amazing job on O Arquiteto (2012) and also the Claudio Dantas drums are very good, usually every drum sound bothers me in new albums, they're actually good here. And of course, the work in the keys by Elisa Wiermann is always welcome since she is a kind of soul to the band's overall sound.

But, instrumental albums in general bothers me after 30 minutes or so, even the best ones, no exception here, specially that the album has over 67 minutes, too much for me. By the time at the 8th track, the third part of the Suite 'O Arquiteto', 'Frank Lloyd', I was a bit bored. It's beautiful, but I guess it's not every second of the album for me.

And yeah, at the 10th track I was waiting for the end of the album, with the cheese keyboard intro, and this isn't good in any audition of a new album.

At the end I wanted to really love this album, but I just can't, this is a solid 3.5 stars and nothing more than that. I will for sure give it some more spins, but I really can't say that O Arquiteto is their best album.

3.5 stars. QUATERNA REQUIEM released three studio albums and two live records between 1990 and 2012. They were from Brazil and play in the Symphonic style. This is their third studio album and final release so far. What a talented band they were with the violinist and keyboardist leading the way with drums, bass and guitar helping out as well. A five piece like on their 1990 debut but we have a different guitarist and bass player here.

I actually got a little excited hearing that first track for the first time along with the next two tracks too actually because they sounded so much better than the music that is on their debut. Just more alive, more depth, less classical and fancy. Well the excitement lasted about 27 minutes then we get the title track called a "Suite" that is over 50 minutes long broken down into 14 songs. And also a return to the sounds of that first album that I gave 3 stars to. So 3.5 stars seems right, in fact ProgShine who is from Brazil says this is a solid 3.5 star record and not their best. He prefers the one studio album I don't have from 1994 called "Quasimodo" and there's no violin on it!

Oh well and I hate to be so dismissive towards this 78 minute recording that must have taken months and months to compose and arrange. And on top of that played by some incredible musicians.