Concerto Moon - Rain Forest review
| Band: | Concerto Moon |
| Album: | Rain Forest |
| Style: | Power metal |
| Release date: | July 1999 |
01. Prologue
02. Time To Die
03. Lonely Last Journey
04. Fight To The Death
05. Half Way To The Sun
06. Rain Forest
07. Unstill Night
08. Live On The Memory
09. Victim Of Desire
10. Picture Of An Old Man
11. Break It Down
12. Time To Die [extended version] [bonus]
13. King Of The Judas [bonus]
14. Waltz For Masquerade [bonus]
Japanese premier power metal band was back in 2000 with the European release of Rain Forest [released during 1999 in Japan only]. After Fragments Of The Moon and From Father To Son, Concerto Moon third effort is honestly the best of these three. With vocals mainly sung in Japanese [and a bit of English, especially choruses...] and leaded by the amazing Norifumi Shima on guitars, Concerto Moon continues its musical path with success.
This album includes some standards of the band such as 'Time To Die', 'Fight To The Death', 'Half Way To The Sun' or 'Unstill Night'. The title track is a very original instrumental guitar work [one of numerous highlights of the album!] Apart from 'Picture Of An Old Man' [really too cheesy], each song on Rain Forest is basically an outstanding technical performance [courtesy of Shima!]. But while Shima's abilities can create such melodies, the vocals parts can destroy everything. That has always been Concerto Moon's curse to have a very bad singer. Even though Japanese seems to be the right language, sometimes their songs would be better in off-vocals versions. However, I can't ignore the fact that the guitar solos on this album are sincerely the best I've ever heard [hence the rating].
Rain Forest is clearly a particular album with lyrics in Japanese and a very surprising guitar player. That's also, in my opinion, one of their best albums ever. Unlike their two previous full-length albums, the recording sound of Rain Forest fits perfectly with Shima's guitar sound. One last thing: this album exists in several different versions [and several covers...], the best one is the 2 CDs set including the EP called Time To Die.
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Written on 07.02.2004 by
Bringing you reviews of quality music and interesting questions such as: "A picture is worth a thousand words. How many words is a song worth?" I have only got so much patience and skills, you do the math. |
Rating:
7.6
7.6
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Rating: 7.6 |
Big in Japan, that's what you can say about Concerto Moon, they have returned with their 3rd album Rain Forest to expand their power and glory reign in their native Japan. Once more they show that they're fanatics about technical brilliance and great melodic metal: Opened with the atmospheric 'Prologue' were floating down the stream of melody into the first and best song on the album 'Time To Die'. But in fact there are no major differences between the songs in a whole, anyway 'Time To Die' and 'Time To Die extended version' are (as they are the same, the extended only begins with a huge guitar solo) the outstanding songs. Read more ›› |
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