CD Info

2008
Raging Planet/Portugal

10  Tracks

English Lyrics

The CD is a multimedia effort, more on that in a moment, but the music is a form of Gothic rock, melodic Gothic rock. Vieira has a strong metal voice; hard, edgy and full of energy with a relatively broad range. The guitars and drums make this danceable Gothic at times, something you don’t always get. And the production is exceptional. This is some nice in house work, provided by Waldemar Sorychta in Germany. Vocals are nicely put together, often overlaid, cleverly mixed and tied to the rest of the sound, just as one would expect from a top flight European production house. This is rock in the 21st century, European rock, tinged with that little extra that comes from the Gothic, it’s dark, sexy and overly entertaining.

Vieira suggested the themes for the music "are mainly based on relationships, human relations. I love to study the behavior of people. Since I was a kid, from my mom’s hairdresser window, I used to sit and watch people passing by for hours. It was a sort of psycho entertainment for me. It helped me a lot to provide some creative skills." And you get that feeling when listening closely to the lyrics, which are, for the most part, relatively easy to understand. That’s especially true of the slower numbers, I'm a Fool But I Love you, for instance, where our Portuguese songstress belts out a haunting rock vocal that takes us to the depths of psychological interpretation.

For most reviewers, the single taken from the CD is a highlight, and I can’t disagree. Air pretty much provides you with a signature demonstration of what these Portuguese metallers are all about. It’s aggressive, it’s rippled with anger and emotion, and it actually talks about something socially relevant. Lyrically, Vieira lays it on the line, as the tanks and planes roll by:

Other songs take different directions. The House of the Past is a story about an actual house, one in which three murders occurred. Don’t tell me Gothic can’t handle the horror of the moment. Again, the lyrics reflect that Canadian Horror Festival thing; you can almost feel the darkness, the flashing blade, the screams and the terror of the event. Without the popcorn, of course. But Freddy Krueger fans will love it.

Up for a Fight takes us in other directions. There’s a little electronic feel to the sound initially, some keyboard material maybe. But the drums and guitars charge in to remind us that this is metal. The theme is relations, the dark side of relations, that is. And the vehicle for the argument is cats. It seems that Vieira has a fascination with them. She says, "This song is our tribute to cats. The mystic side of cats has always been a challenge for me." And lyrically we see the connection:

WE STEP INTO THE NIGHT
LIKE CATS UP FOR A FIGHT
YOU SEE ME THROUGH THE NIGHT
YOU SEE ME WALKING ON THE LINE

Interesting, never saw my cat as a model for relations, course, he’s a feral from 8,000 feet above sea level, above South Park, Colorado (yea, that South Park) and is the first cat in his lineage to have set eyes on a human. Guess he hasn’t figured out what to watch out for with humans yet, he runs from all of us. . . er, with the exception of several witches I’ve known, Pagan witches that is, real ones, nice looking too. Guess he has good taste.

Another highlight of the CD, IMO, has to be Slightly Mad, a topic I’m imminently familiar with having worked as a shrink in some of the less attractive dark dungeons of humanity in my time. It’s a topic the Gothic artists seem comfortable addressing, you get this direction somewhat regularly with this music. I’m not sure if it correlates with the music, the drive to understand humanity or just the music business in general. Or, of course, it could just be that the topic appeals to me, for whatever reason. Oh, now what did I do with my Thorazine? But the song does have a vocal component to remember. And that’s on top of an intro that reminds me of fun filled times at the Funny Farm, complete with Nurse Wacko and her bucket of pills. Vieira takes us to the edge, where sanity is only the occasional visitor, usually on Thursdays when nothing else is scheduled:

Ahh, the good ol’ days when nothing was real. . . and no one knew the difference anyway.

Oh, and before I forget, the first track on the CD is a nice Flash application that provides some nice background, some pictures and a Flash movie of the band during production. Interestingly enough, the sound track for the movie is the aforementioned Slightly Mad, which certainly seems to capture the spirit of the moment. A nice addition to the overall package.

All in all, good stuff, great metal, outstanding production, a great female vox full of emotion and energy and some interesting themes. And you gotta love the cats.

Stay tuned as we expect the new release shortly, and, good as this one was, you can expect a review of that one upon arrival.. . .assuming Robin Stryker doesn’t grab it first. She can be sneaky that way.

9 / 10

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