Review by Daniel for Angra - Temple of Shadows (2004)

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.