Power Metal is the name of the game here. Flying the flag is ex Angra man Andre Matos who’s been running his band since 2006.
I would contend that Power Metal is about excitement and energy, and this album in theory has all the ingredients. Matos’s voice is excellent, the drummer inputs the galloping energy and the songs rumble on merrily, yet if I were to liken this band to Masterplan, who I like very much and to whom this work is vaguely comparable, there’s a world of difference. Basically Masterplan are sophisticated, whereas this is join-the-dots Power Metal. “Mentalize” follows the classic formula, but that’s it. There’s nothing of interest. Although there are a couple of tedious ballads in there somewhere, it’s basically 55 minutes of the same thing. If the tracks aren’t dreary, they’re flat like “Mirror like Me” which is the tiredest Power Metal track I’ve ever heard, not to mention the guitar solos which seem to be independent of the main song structure. Then there’s “Violence”, which is quite a decent, jolly song, but spoilt by a strange attempt to add as many Power Metal touches in as possible, regardless of whether it all hangs together or not. If it isn’t bland and out of the formula book, “Mentalize” is going off at tangents, neither of which makes for great listening. The only track on the album which I actually liked was the title track “Mentalize”. Here’s there’s real heightening drama and a sense of the band leading us listeners in the march forward. But where did the energy of this track go to over the rest of this album?
This album was summed up for me by the lyric on “Shift the Night Away”: “Banal intentions mold (sic) a personality. Needless to mention. Madness and insanity”. Well it rhymes. I appreciate that Power Metal lyrics are rarely Shakespearian, but this is just one aspect of the disappointment that this album brings. More importantly, this album has no depth or cohesion.
http://www.andrematos.net
http://www.myspace.com/andrematossolo
http://www.spv.de
