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By
far the biggest challenge presented by these Puerto
Ricans is not the overwhelming power of the music nor
the gut wrenching feeling expressed by their
simple-minded epic doom metal; the biggest challenge
here is getting over the super over the top vocals of
Erico La Bestia. When you hear La Bestia recite quite
eloquently his lines about whatever it is he is talking
about (blood, death, exorcists, eagles of death, more
blood and Gethsemane – you know? that garden by the
Mount Olives in Jerusalem), you can clearly imagine him
making the same ooohhh faces of Pavarotti. Surely, he
goes for the same wow effect, at times singing in the
same exaggerated fashion of an opera singer with a
gifted falsetto, except La Bestia isn’t really that
good. At best, his singing is spirited enough for us to
want to hug him, but that’s about it. To add insult to
injury, every once in a while La Bestia gets help from
one of his Dantes, the effect is middle road between
barber shop quartet and monk chants. To be fair, La
Bestia deserves credit, anyone willing to go that far
that often, deserves credit.
Don’t get me
wrong, there is a market for this kind of stuff. Fans of power
metal love this type of vocals. Especially when they are placed
over triumphal melodies and epic songs. But that’s not exactly
the case here. Pagano is musically, a pretty adept record
filled with humble yet well-played tunes. There is a very frank
simplicity to Dantesco’s music, an old school air that totally
ignores every heavy metal album that’s come out after 1992.
There is a very sincere classic doom feel to it that owes debt
to the 80’s phases of both Solitude Aeturnus and Candlemass. One
good thing about Pagano, the sequencing of the first half
makes the album bearable and La Bestia’s vocals not that grand
of a malady.
So yeah, it
is a split decision here. I like the music but I hate the
vocals. La Bestia isn’t all that bad when he doesn’t push
himself over his range, unfortunately that’s not often the case.
In most cases motherfucker is as obnoxious as a rooster in
boiling water.
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