CASA ENCANTADA

Actually it's just since recent times that I dived a bit deeper into the South American progressive rock scene and in fact out of the few Brazilian bands I listened to so far I found only two that could really fascinate me: BACAMARTE and INDEX. So now I stumbled over O TERCO and honestly I've got to say I don't find their music very much interesting, at least on this album here, which is supposed to be one of their better ones. Listening to the first two songs one could get the impression to have an ordinary latin-american pop album. Then there are a few mellow acoustic ballads quite reminiscent of Bossa Nova like tracks 4 and 6. Track #5 has an extremely exaggerated bombastic and rather "cheesy" orchestral sound, almost like the soundtrack for an old low quality dramatic movie. Track #7 features some nice acoustic guitar and flute, but overall it's more or less just a nice, but quite ordinary latin-american "Easy-Listening"-song. Track #8 is a more rocking one, a little bit reminiscent of KANSAS or YES in their worst pop rock era. If there would be more of the kind of track #9, I could give it a higher rating. But in fact apart of track #3 which is better than the rest as well there's not much offered here.

So finally I found only 2 really good songs out of 11, which I find quite a low ratio. This album might have been a very good one in Brazilian pop music and be of interest for someone who is favouring Brazilian music in general, but IMHO one could not call it a relevant one in symphonic progressive rocks, but good for 2.5 stars!