When I first listened to this CD I knew right away that it was destined to get a rating of about 3 from me. I had listened to it once all the way through and once about half way through. Before reviewing any CD however I give it a good 3 to 4 listens. So I knew I had to finally bear down and give this disc at least one more good listening before I started to write this review.
Glad I did...in fact I'm on at least my 8th or 9th listen now. Keep in mind by revisiting this CD over and over hasn't all together improved the rating so terribly much. As you can see it's only getting a 6 out of 10 but that's much better than the 3 I had originally intended.
Dynasty is another one of the South American (Brazil in fact) bands playing a melodic, slow to mid-paced power metal style. The Angel's Return is their first CD however they did release a demo tape prior to this. They also just released a new CD called Follow the Sign which I'm looking into getting before too much longer. With The Angel's Return you get a total of 6 songs, 2 of which are cover songs. I love to hear cover songs from time to time, but I do feel 1 is always enough on any band's full length album...this being only a 6 song EP 2 is way too many. After all I'm looking to hear Dynasty's music not their favorite songs.
The covers are classics no doubt in 'Out of the Darkness' by Bloodgood and 'A Face in the Dark' by Barren Cross. These two songs are what almost condemned this CD by me. They really are not good covers at all. These two songs do not do justice to Dynasty's style. The vocals suffer greatly as the vocalist leaves his normal singing and tries to imitate Mike Lee and Michael Bloodgood. It just doesn't come off well. Being as I knew these two songs I focused on them mostly when I first listened to this CD, but as I began to listen to the original tracks by Dynasty I realized these guys are much better than these two songs.
That's right once you hear what these guys come up with on their own, you find that they really are good. Unfortunately you only get 4 original songs on this CD. Track 3 'Today' is the obligatory ballad, but I will give them this, the end of the song the guitars come in with a speedy fury and end the song very nicely. The highlight track is without a doubt the last track called 'My Life' that's with an almost groove based riff, and the vocals are gruffed up just a tad, but its very nice.
The guitars have a bit of the bees in a box sound to them throughout the CD but are skillfully played. the leads are fun leads that fit each song very nicely. The bassist is pretty darn good too, flowing from creating backbone music to venturing out and being creative. The drums in all honesty are pretty standard. The vocals are high pitched...surprisingly they really do lean toward a sound similar to the old Bloodgood sound. The production of the CD is so much better than I had anticipated it being...everything is very clear and mixed remarkably well.
Overall a fair CD, not shockingly good, but there is so much talent in this band that I'm very anxious to hear their newest release Follow the Sign and if you're interested in this band I'd suggest you try to find that one too. This album came out in 1999 and with FtS having been released April 2001 that gave these guys a couple years to fine tune their skills. Even though I've not heard I can only believe they've improved and have a better release. If you're nuts about FtS then you might want to hunt down a copy of TAR.
6/10
