2006-09-02
Argentina's Kapel Maister sound like the love child of
Nightwish and
Yngwie Malmsteen, just add another operatic female vocalist to the mix and you have "Into Salvation", the album works well on some levels, but fails in a few others.
The main strength of the album, and its quite a strong plus, is the technical ability of the band members, truly amazing playing abilities all around, the obvious main attraction is guitarist Gonzalo Solgarian, who sounds exactly like Malmsteen himself, doing neo-classical movements at extreme speed, he is certainly a very talented guitarist whose lead work on the album is nothing short of magnificent, the keyboards are also fantastic, neo-classical and complex, bass and drums are the same, the problem starts with the two female vocalists.
Even though the band features two good looking operatic vocalists who's voices are quite capable and impressive, there's something wrong in the combination of the neo-classical metal with the two distinctly operatic voices, separately both sound astounding, but something is lost in the combination of the two, while Nightwish somehow managed to pull that off, it seems that Kapel Maister, easily better players than Nightwish, strain too hard with the operatic vocals, it may be the answer lies in less operatic vocals, maybe fitting in more conventional female vocals that will sit in better with the metal in the band, the same route that Nightwish themselves took with their latter albums.
In any case, this album is a must have for fans of neo-classical metal, fans of
Time Requiem,
Symphony X and Malmsteen will be truly amazed by some of the musicianship here, but regarding the songs themselves, something needs to change.
Alon Miasnikov
