SHAKARY 2006

At last: Shakary ! At least, that was what I thought when I recently got hold of this CD. Quite some years ago someone had told me that Shakary sounded a lot like Clepsydra, one of my all time favourite bands. So I thought: let's add it to the collection. But Shakary wasn't really in the stores in Holland. So lately I read in our reviewssite that Shakary 2006 was actually the two albums combined only in a better production quality. That was exactly what I wanted but I still had no idea how good Shakary was.

First conclusion: Shakary is no Clepsydra ! Biggest difference is the vocal aspect. Noel mcCalla's voice is very dominant and is in the case of the Shakary-sound more than 50% which is unusual to me. On itself nothing wrong with that apart from the fact that vocals aren't too significant to me in general, but that's a very personal thing. I'm more interested in the instrumental aspect. And that's not an easy thing with dominant vocals. So in fact that's almost ruining the pleasure for me. The compositions and the instrumental aspect are both ok with Shakary but because of the before-mentioned it's not enough for me to get a good feeling about this (double)album. Noel mcCalla has a good strong voice, I'm not suggesting there's something wrong with it, it's just my personal problem with it.

But it overshadows all the other aspects of this bands music so much that it's all I have to say about it. And because of which I will have to cut it down to three stars. What a pity !