AWAKING THE CENTURIES

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Hello, this is a true gothic-metal!!!...This cd is a MASTERPIECE of this genre!!!... All totaly music is perfect, the female voices, choirs, all atmospheres. Occasionally there are gruff vocals, which may inspire the attribution of "Death Metal." I love this band! If you like LACRIMOSA or\and THERION you will definitely love this band. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! Thank HAGGARD...!

I hesitated to write this review, because the CD was a gift, and I don't share the giver's high opinion of the content. They say one should "never look a gift horse in the mouth," but I did promise to review this album, so here goes....

First of all, this is a very ambitious project by a unique band. Haggard is composed of a metal band at its core, and is fleshed out by a classical/medieval ensemble. There are 20 members in all, not including guest musicians and choir! (Like ELP's overblown WORKS tour, this outfit must have quite the operating budget!) The concept behind AWAKING THE CENTURIES is the prophecy of the 16th-Century "seer" Nostradamus, and the juxtaposition here of metal and medieval music is not without merit. When the kettledrums and chainsaw guitars come thundering in on the pretty instrumental efforts of the "orchestra," the result fits well enough within the bounds of "prog."

What I really don't like about this disc, however, is that the bulk of the vocals are delivered by a guy (with a thick German accent -- that's not normally a problem for me) who is deliberately trying to sound like a demon (imagine Regan from "The Exorcist" in full possession-mode, or "Animal" from the Muppets at his most ornery). I suppose the effect is meant to be powerful and chilling, but for me it's just silly and irritating. (OK pal, I know you're not really a demon. Could you please stop ruining the songs, and either just sing in your real voice, or keep quiet?) Don't get me wrong -- there is some lovely music here. But of twelve tracks, six of the longest ones either feature the Hellish vocals, or are marred by histrionic narration atop the music. Hmmm, that leaves exactly 6 minutes 39 seconds of nice classical/medieval/choral music that I can get into -- why don't I just play one of my actual classical or medieval CDs instead?

This may well appeal to the tastes of some younger/angry listeners, but it's certainly not my "cup of chai." There's plenty of brutality and ugliness in this world already, and I can easily see it on the TV news; I don't need it to be oozing from my stereo speakers as well. (When I want to hear music about Nostradamus, I'll stick to Al Stewart's excellent song.) I crave more beauty and majesty in my progressive rock, and I'm only willing to wade through so much ugliness to experience it. There's simply too much of the latter, and not enough of the former, to make me give this album more than a two-star rating. Grow up, lose the "demon" and try some singing next time, Haggard, and make the great album that I know you can make!

After the original "And Thou Shall Trust... the Seer", Haggard repeat his formula. Now, the impact isn't so strong because this album already haven't the originality founded in their previous work: it's like the second part of that. Perhaps, the little difference lies in the predominant baroque tunes over the medieval feeling, but we find again the pretty classical melodies mixtured with heavy moments, once again the growling male voice fighting with the beauty female, etc. Exactly the same vein, yes, and -what important!- the same high quality too. There's nothing new but, however, this is another brilliant album and, of course, deserves the same recommendation.

Like their previous work this album is a concept one about Nostradamus' life and prophecies. Not much has changed in the presented music style here which is 16th century music combined with gothic/death metal. Certainly the way Haggard accomplish this blend by using a full classical ensemble comprising of 20 musicians/vocalists has to be called quite unique and actually I'm not aware of any other band that could be compared to them. On the other hand that goes without saying is this high-contrast style using grunt vocals next to beautiful classical tunes of cellos, violins, clarinet, oboe and so on for sure not everybody's "cup of tea". I can imagine that this band cannot offer much enjoyable for people who are mainly into "conventional" Prog and favouring sheer beauty and harmony. But I've to say that I don't have a particular problem with the (admittedly) quite "awful" male vocals which might predominate here a bit more than on their first one since I prefer contrasts in my Prog. If they would be replaced by "normal" ones Haggard would sound quite similar to any other symphonic Prog or Neo-Prog band and then they would certainly lose attraction for me and the rest of their other fans. In addition to the first part of this concept they're making use here of a full classical choir. Lyrics (partly as narrations) are in three languages: Latin, German and English. Thus some people being only familiar with the latter one might have problems to follow them. In my view Haggard managed here very well to reflect life and music of this era garmented with a modern "metallic" sound and therefore I think this work deserves a rating of 4 stars. Not because it should be considered essential in Prog generally but because it should be appreciated as an excellent effort. Recommended to anyone with an open mind who doesn't mind some "hellish" sounding vocals.

As I wrote for their debut ""And Thou Shall Trust...", the most difficult achievement would be a confirmation of their talent. Their first album was rather innovative (at least I felt so) and mixed unmixable musical genres: from heavy metal to classic.

This one is no other. But the surprise is no longer the same. On top of this, there are too much choir on this one. The whole album sounds also over produced: to try to sound "rich" is not always the best you can handle. This work is a succession of short and uninspired songs till the title track takes place: " Awaking The Centuries" which is the sixth song featured...

But it is too much of a growling affair to my taste. The combination with short classical passages is not working very well, and the whole just collapses IMHHO. The first song which I could depict on par with their debut is "In A Fullmoon Procession" because it holds melodic female vocals, some medieval fantasy but it ends in some chaotic growling unfortunately.

Unlike their first release, the vocals are weak here: lots of growling while these ones were reduced to a background feature. I am NOT a fan of this type of "experiment". Six tracks out of twelve lasts for less than two minutes and are quite useless. Most of them do hold the "press next" attribute.

This is not a good album. I really wonder what went through their mind after their very good debut. This one sounds as a (bad) joke really. No fun at all. Uninventive. In one word: boring to death and somewhat painful for my ears.

"Awaking The Centuries" is quite a huge deception as far as I'm concerned. From a very creative start, the band quickly showed his limits. Let's hope that they'll wake up in future albums. This one rates quite low on my scale. From three out of ten, I'll upgrade it to two stars but no more.