ALIANÇA DOS TEMPOS

Here's perhaps one of the more disturbing prog rock albums I've heard (you'll find out as you keep reading). OK, so this band, based out of São Paolo, Brazil plays prog that isn't too different from many other prog bands past and present, bringing to mind bands like Hungary's SOLARIS (but with vocals), with its fair share of fanfare synths obviously inspired by ELP (without sounding like ELP). The band consisted of vocalist Aron Shade, guitarist Gil Vieira, bassist Ivan Lion, drummer André Georges, and keyboardist Fabio Ribeiro. "Aliança dos Tempos", originally released on a small Brazilian label called Rock Forever (on vinyl only, until Musea in France reissued on CD about two or three years later), was apparently a concept album, I guess on time travel, but all the music is sung in Portuguese, so I can't tell.

The album starts off with, "Prelúdio", a synth fanfare, but then many of the problems of this album starts to surface. You have next the slow-paced "Limiar do Alvorecer", and Aron Shade, instead of using a normal voice, uses this disturbing wheezing voice like he has asthma. That wheezing voice is used from time to time throughout the album. That, by itself, was the reason I considered it one of the more disturbing albums I got. I guess he was supposed to play a sickly, old man on those cuts. Luckily on other cuts, he uses a more normal voice, plus the album is full of instrumental passages. There's even "Ilusão Inacabada I" and "II" where they give the music a more Afro- Brazilian slant to the album, but those are very short pieces. I'm an not entirely impressed with this album. The production is rather lousy. Fabio Ribeiro unfortunately uses digital synthesizers in the fashion that I don't find the most appealing (analog synths would've benefitted the guy big time, but I guess being 1990, people hadn't quite rediscovered analog, and a band like ÄNGLAGARD was still a couple years off).

Apparently the original LP of "Alianças dos Tempos" was the first part of the concept album to be concluded, which apparently the conclusion only made it on the Musea CD reissue. Anyway, this album is probably not the first Brazilian prog album you should get. Those wheezy vocals and crappy synths sure bog things down, but it does have its moments. Not essential.