Dantesco – Pagano
Dantesco, Puerto Rico’s premier metal band play a form of epic doom metal not a million miles from Doomsword, Solstice and Solitude Aeturnus. The first thing you will notice is they are all in Spanish and that vocalist Erico La Bestia sings for a good portion of the time in a cod-operatic style that somewhat distracts from the music. It’s hard to get into any sort of metal with someone sounding like Pavarotti singing over the top of it. The performance and composing of the music is top notch, but it’s impossible to get past a vocalist who by rights should be singing in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and it’s not coincidence that the bonus track on this album is actually taken from one!
The guitarwork is immensely soulful and provocative and with another vocalist I could probably get into this a lot more, but La Bestia’s vocals which when they aren’t operatic, sound like a parrot attempting falsetto, simply don’t work in Metal. Operatic vocals are for opera and nothing else really by the evidence of this record.

Friday, October 24th, 2008 @ 6:47 pm