CARAVELLUS

Caravellus is a young progressive metal band from Brazil offering so far 2 albums, this is the second relese Knowledge machine from 2010 issued at Metalodic Records. I know this band since last year when they release this album and I was impressed by the musicianship, awesome skills, not realy excited on some pieces abot the arrangemnts. So, this brazilian band is almost all the time on fire here, with exception on some parts and a mellow piece Whereever I am, in the rest up tempo parts , well executed, they remind me a lot of Symphony X, but with a good doze of power metal elements added. Also they had some Angra (the era with Falaschi) attitude here and there, but as a whole they are more then ok. Instristing arrangements, fast playing, keybords interluded with guitars of the highest level, specialy on pieces like Beyond the skies and Behind the mask, I guess the best tracks from the labum, fantastic musicianship and great ideas. Now, if the instrumental passages are more then ok, even great, the voice of Raphael Dantas is only ok, I mean, in his most mellow parts is absolutly great, realy fantastic like on Whereever I am, great tone of voice, I also like him a lot on Beyond the skies in his most melodic parts is awesome, now, when he is on the rough side of singing on couple of pieces is too in front mixed like on Corsairs In Black, it sounds realy bad, at least for my ears, to forced, this happening again on When the Night Has Fallen - the worst piece from the album, realy absolutly noting is ok on this tune. It sounds very well on Dance of damnation for example, rough but very confident in his possibilities, well done vocal parts. The album ends with the title track Knowledge machine, who remind me a lot of Dream Theater, from Inner turbulence album, spoken intro over piano passages and then developing slowly in some great piece climax crescendo who has almost 16 min in the end, great piece, maybe little to long but ok constructed, the best part is only after 9 min when the piece has an unexpected turn in musical terms, some fantastic musicianship is shown, It were better if not most of the piece had talking moments, too much talk and not enough instrumental passages and only 3 min from 16 is realy awesome instrumental greatness, the rest is talk over some background music, is clear that they rely on voice, who btw has some growling moments on the end of the piece, quite intrsting and strange parts in same time . Very Dream Theater like piece, very influenced by them specialy from Six degrees if inner turbulence era. So, an ok album with both great and weak moments, but overall the good moments are in more quantity and the album desearve attention from prog metal fans. Similar with Symphony X, Dream Theater, tunisian Myrath. 3 stars for sure, good album, yet nothing realy ground breaking here. A talented progressive metal band that for sure will climb higher in this field, this album is their ticket to world wide recognition.