1) Light Of Transcendence; 2) Travelers Of Time;
3) Black Widow's Web; 4) Insania; 5) The Bottom Of My Soul; 6) War Horns; 7)
Caveman; 8) Magic Mirror; 9) Always More; 10) Ømni: Silence Inside; 11) Ømni:
Infinite Nothing.
General verdict: The usual post-Matos Angra delivery —
impeccably forgettable power metal whose modest catchiness is no match for its deadpan
seriousness.
Before embarking upon this review, I carefully
re-read everything I had to say about Angra's previous album, Secret Garden, and now I have a good
pretext for keeping this one short and sweet — because nearly everything I wrote
about that one applies to this one. There is a serious difference concerning
the line-up: founding father Kiko Loureiro finally had enough (and, as they
say, went to joing Megadeth, which should probably be counted as a significant
upgrade for the man). His replacement is Marcelo Barbosa, a viciously melodic
shredder but, as far as I can tell, not much of a songwriter or trend-setter.
But that's okay, since most of the songs on the previous record were written by
Bittencourt anyway — nowadays, the sole surviving member from the classic
original line-up.
Other than that, what we have here is yet
another fairly generic — and, as far as generic goes, fairly consistent — power
metal opus, this time apparently based on the familiar concept of AI overtaking
human intelligence in the near future; the last time I gave a damn about Angra
lyrics, though, was on Holy Land,
and I see no reason to get involved now. The songs are mostly one
speed-riff-fest after another, with plenty of symphonic guitar posturing and
ecstatic singing from Fabio — loud and robust, but who is really going to go
crazy over Beethoven influences in the main melody of ʽLight Of Transcendenceʼ
in 2018?
Occasional oddities begin to attract attention
around the third track, which features guest vocals from Brazilian pop star
Sandy in the intro and outro, and then, in a startling twist, Arch Enemy's
Alissa White-Gluz and her gurgly growling vocals in a call-and-response duet
with Fabio — I think this is the first time we encounter growling on an Angra
album, and I am not sure it should count as anything more than a novelty; but
then, what is really to distinguish one late-period Angra album from another
other than novelties? (And, for that matter, a few bars of Alissa's growling
are arguably more fun than having to sit through an entire album of Arch
Enemy).
Another eyebrow-raising track is ʽCavemanʼ,
which starts out with an unusually gruff industrial / math-rock riff punch —
but then segues into a bunch of tribal percussion and (presumably) indigenous
Brazilian chanting, which clearly brings to mind the style of Holy Land, which the band was indeed
eager to invoke. Unfortunately and predictably, the song never lives up to the
level of Holy Land, but at least it
is an effort to break out of the rut — as is ʽMagic Mirrorʼ with its romantic
piano interlude, and ʽAlways Moreʼ, a jazz-folk ballad that completely
dispenses with metallic formalities and shows that this band is capable of
colorful pop riffs as well.
But all of these elements are still relatively
minor: there can be no doubt that, in general, Angra are still happy as heck to
work within a safely established formula, and that formula is still not enough
to convince me that power metal (or, at least, this particular brand of power
metal) could ever be taken seriously — that is, to the point of invoking a
cathartic state. If you are already a fan of Angra, Ømni delivers the goods with all the efficiency of a truly loyal
customer service; but that's about all the album does. Well, that and it also
replaces O with a more difficult Unicode, merely to make things look a bit more
Scandinavian... haven't those guys always been from Brazil, though? Took them
quite a while to graphically acknowledge their debt to the land of ice and
snow, I must say.
Typo: "went to joing Megadeth".
ReplyDeleteI do have to wonder why this gets the green verdict after apparently doing everything that merited a thumbs-up for Secret Garden.
ReplyDelete