progshine
01. Blindfold The Progressive Metal Sleepwalker Sun begins calm and serene, being guided by the voice of Giana Araújo. After the initial quiet time the weight comes into play, this time the vocals are shared with Luiz Alvim, a big surprise in this track is the violin of Marcus Viana (Sagrado Coração da Terra) making their presence felt, and rightly so. The song is strong, well written, complex and intelligent. It is common to progressive metal bands being wrong in their arrangements and sounds. Definitely not the case here. In the second half of the track, after a stop, the keys from Luiz is present with the bass solo by Francisco Falcon, the heavy guitars in this song are for Ricardo Marins. Beautiful track, all the elements are well placed, united and well arranged. 14:24 minutes of pure musical delight.
02. Bring 'Em The band has as main component in this track the acoustic guitar by the bassist Francisco, along with the keyboards and the vocal from Giana that is how the verses unfold. The chorus is heavy and cohesive. At the end the rhythm changes, is fast and broken, a sort of spiral sound, the solos are from Fabio Montserrat.
03. Sleepwalker Sun The song that gives name to the disc and the band starts with the bass chords and keys building layers. When the guitar and drums enter the sound becomes dense for a time and back to calm when the singing begins. The chorus is 'crooked', lyrics and melody do not fall on purpose. The disc is full of guests, especially the guitars, the title track of the soil is responsible for Alex Martin, soon followed by a synthesizer solo and chorus again. The end has a series of vocal 'outsiders'.
04. Dead Flowers A ballad with voice and piano, only the 2nd verse there are changes, with several voices, a broken rhythm and a very interesting and quirky vocal effects. The chorus is very melodic but 'in the sound pattern' of the band. The guitar solos are from Leandro Leg Furtado. An interesting bass solo is also present just before the last chorus. Complete.
05. Russian Roulette This reminded me of early Dream Theater, which is not a problem because the Sleepwalker Sun have originality and Dream Theater is the largest, and in a a way the precursor from Prog Metal style. I just think that they open many concessions to the vocals, every time a verse is sung the song 'calm down', lose weight, only back in the choruses, just turning a formula and can tire the listener.
06. Jalen's Eyes The piano begins the song, it's the shortest song of the disc, and the excellent violin Marcus Viana appears for a brief moment, but back to the course of music. Giana gave a beautiful interpretation for the song, which is very beautiful by the way!
07. Nocturnal So here is one thing that I like and that could be used more often, excerpts from conversations of a number of different people, this idea has also been widely used by bands like Pain Of Salvation and Dream Theater, and the classic bands like Pink Floyd. Nocturnal has some differences such as the harpsichord (one of many types of keyboards available) and the eletric guitar played as a classical guitar. The solos of the band (this time the keyboard) was led by Andre Mello (Tempus Fugit).
A good record, well above the average in the style, I've heard many progressive metal bands here in Brazil, but they are always wrong in my opinion, especially with vocals and keyboards. In this case we have a great example of how to make a good hard progressive metal.