AWAKING THE CENTURIES

I agree with most of the comments which the previous reviewer, Peter Rideout, left about "Awaking The Centuries". Judging from their music and the professionally-made website www.haggard.de, HAGGARD is a very ambitious project indeed. Many of the band members play classical acoustic instruments, and their photographs at the website rather convincingly portray them as classical musicians. I only wonder if all these classical musicians were okay with the vocalist's "demonic" singing, ruining their fine instrumental work. In fact, the demonic vocals don't sound to me as repelling if the album is listened to more than one time, but I think that in any case this singing style has made a permanent damage to the otherwise excellent progressive album.

"Awaking The Centuries" features a few interesting pieces of music, which sound truly gothic. My favourite medieval themes from this album are the first part of "Intro - 1. Pestilencia", some fragments of "Chapter I ¬- 1. Heavenly Damnation" (not marred by the the demon's voice), the beginning of "Chapter III - 1. Awaking The Centuries" and the closing "Chapter V ¬- 3. Rachmaninov-Choir". I also enjoyed occasional lyrics in different languages, such as French and Russian. If accompanied with a "normal" voice, the album would deserve some four and a half stars, but for what it is - only three.