February 2023 Feature Release - The Guardians Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The Guardians has been nominated by myself. It's the highly regarded 2004 fifth album "Temple of Shadows" from Brazilian power metallers Angra, a record I've been meaning to check out for many years now but have never found the time. Will it trigger my power metal gag reflex in much the same way as most of the European stuff tends to? Time will tell.

https://metal.academy/releases/5023

This Angra album was a classic for me when I was still listening to power metal. I plan to revisit Temple of Shadows and see if it's worth another chance, so some listening and a review shall be done this month.

I did my review, here's its summary:

Any open-minded music fan should try at least one mature concept album to explore the story that you might find in a book or a movie. All the band members have worked together to build the soundtrack to a story written by guitarist Rafael Bittencourt, proving that their teamwork really made the dream work! There's a lot of headbanging power metal action, complete with professional guitar solo dueling between Bittencourt and Kiko Loureiro, and the unique vocal power of Edu Falaschi. However, the speed is often balanced out with some softer ballads or mid-tempo tunes. What can also add to this grand sound includes many orchestral/progressive/Latin influences, along with guest appearances from vocalists of bands Edenbridge, Helloween, Gamma Ray, and Blind Guardian. It's quite a journey for even the heavier metalheads to take, and its "classic" status isn't going away anywhere!

4.5/5

OK, so I really tried with this one. I genuinely wanted to like it (particularly as the guitar solos are so spectacular) but I just couldn't quite get it over the line in the end & it wasn't because it's a power metal record as the reality is that it's actually not. I challenge anyone to identify more than two or three of the thirteen tracks that are genuine power metal here. The two obvious ones ("Spread Your Wings" & "The Temple of Hate") fall into that Helloween/Rhapsody space & are pretty intolerable to me though so I guess the genre has still had an impact on my overall enjoyment factor. If you examine the tracklisting closely though you'll find that most of the album is actually made up of a fairly ambitious brand of Dream Theater-inspired progressive metal which sounds good on paper but in practice ends up being too laden with cheese for my taste. It was a bit frustrating to find that I enjoy just over half of the individual tracks but that the inclusions that I can't get into are so wide of the mark that it taints the whole experience for me.

As I said, those solos try their very best to salvage things for me as they're as good as you'll hear (Better than Dream Theater though Andi? That hurts! Petrucci is my guitar idol!). Front man Edu Falaschi tries really hard to sound like James LaBrie for the majority of the album & pulls it off pretty well for the most part while the orchestration is really well done but it's the usual concept album tropes that drag things down with numerous filler tracks being included purely for the sake of a storyline that I have next to no interest in. The symphonic element is predominantly used as an accompaniment rather than a focal point which was a relief but Angra simply lose me too often to warrant me returning to "Temple of Shadows". Instead I find the record to be a good source of playlist tracks with songs like "Winds of Destination" & "Morning Star" being high quality examples of the progressive metal genre.

3/5