9

Wow. My opinion of Noturnall went from impressed, to Obama's “not bad” face, to “this is tolerable”, to “what the fuck am I listening to?” in a matter of a few tracks. The album starts out fine (the drumming alone was the thing that impressed me) and then just does a Wile-E.-Coyote-realizing-he's-run-off-a-cliff, plunging into the chasm. By the 4th track, I was ready to lean over the cliff and drop a few anvils and a piano on it for good measure.

Okay, so how to describe the over all style here. It's definitely comparable to Angra's rhythmic progressive style infused with the Brazilian almost samba-esque rhythms, with flashes of power metal, down-tuned guitars with a modern sound, and a side of mallcore. Aquiles Preister, formally of Angra, provides the drumming for this album, and he makes the best of a bad situation, he is fantastic, but you can only put so much makeup on a pig before you question how bad you fucked up by not making it into Dream Theater and ending up in this band instead.

They're clearly aiming for something close to Angra's later, less power metal, more progressive sound with a touch of something more aggressive, but man, they didn't just miss the target, they missed the bullseye, the target, and the ground.

The closest attempt is the second track “Change!” in which Aquiles steals the show with flourishes on the cymbals, playing deep in the pocket – completely drawing attention away from the dull content of the rest of the song. For better or worse. The song has a groovy, down-tuned modern sounding main riff, but in the pre-chorus opens up nicely where Aquiles builds tension with his intricate patterns. The chorus is the closest they get to Angra's hooks, but still feels lackadaisical by contrast.

The next track has more absolutely kickass playing by Aquiles. At this point, I'm at Obama's “not bad” face, as the sweeps in the beginning of the song sound a little sloppy, but I still enjoy the effort as the sweeps nonetheless move nicely into more power metal, melodic lead, then drop into another groovy riff, leading into Aquiles bringing the thunder with multiple blistering beats partitioned by impressive, elaborate fills. By the time the chorus of this song hits, doubt has crept in. This is some very radio-friendly, modern rock garbage complete with tough-guy vocals capping it off. The solos, and intricate structure of the bridge section that comes later, can't lift this track out of mediocrity.

From there, there is nothing Aquiles can do to salvage this album. Good bye, Wile E. Coyote. There are some ballads so bad that 15 years of listening to power metal could not prepare me for the skin-crawling cringe I experience. There's the atrocious Frankenstein's monster that is Angra's sound fused with metalcore in Shadows. There's the brutal amateurishness of Mysterious. Pain – aptly titled – closes the album out with a double-face-palm of embarrassment as Noturnall tries their hand an Angra-style acoustic session, and the vocalist one last time caws out a final attempt to replicate genuine emotion and a pleasing tone of voice.

You know what is the best analogy of what this album is? They're some kids who want to cover Angra songs, and put their own spin on them, attempting every manner of stylistic butchery – and the bassist's uncle is Aquiles, so he gets guilted into playing drums for them. Never mind the stylistic missteps, the playing is amateurish (aside from the drums), the guitar tone is puny, and the vocalist is just next-level cringe. When I say a couple of these tracks made my skin crawl with cringe, I am not joking.

The only thing you could get out of this is Aquiles' fantastic playing, but is it worth it? Nah, spare yourself the misery and just listen to some old Angra.