Rain Forest

Rain Forest is the highlight of Concerto Moon´s early career, before changing vocalists and moving to heavier direction. While From Father To Son and Fragments Of The Moon were decent power metal offerings with some hits and misses, on Rain Forest the band finally managed to create consistently good album.

Guitarist Norifumi Shima is the mainman of Concerto Moon and his neoclassical shredding is what captures the listener´s interest. While fast-paced shredding is where Shima shines the most, he shows his versatility on beautiful instrumental title song of the album. I´m not usually fan of instrumental songs as they commonly result in dull guitarwankery, but Rain Forest (the song) seeps with emotion.

Vocalist Takao Ozaki has the unfortunate role of being probably the weakest link in the band. He is not bad, but his voice is bit bland and he has serious problems with English pronounciation. Mediocre grasp of English reflects to the lyrics too, making most of them feel bit uninspired. He sounds pretty decent when singing in Japanese though. Lonely Last Journey and Live on the Memory are very convincing performances from Ozaki. Unstill Night borders speed metal with it´s frantic pace and Ozaki´s raw energy shines there. I still feel that Concerto Moon wasted bit of their potential with mediocre vocalist. Ozaki was replaced soon after Rain Forest album with Takashi Inoue.

There is basically only one weaker song on the album, the ballad Picture of an Old Man. The song gives desired break from Shima´s guitar shredding but ends up being too boring. Otherwise Rain Forest offers power metal goodness with extremely talented guitarist. Production is not too polished which gives proper punch to the heavier riffs and pounding drums. Even with it´s flaws, Rain Forest is highly enjoyable album.