It is interesting to see where cultural crosses take music. Of all the peoples you expect to hear play Celtic sounding music, Brazilians are not one of them. Tuatha de Danann has a unique sound that blends some of the tribal influences of Brazilian music with Celtic chords and sounds. The music is similar in style but not form to that of Cruachan. While Cruachan gets many musicians to play traditional Irish instruments on their albums, Tuatha de Danann relies more on keyboards.

This EP, while short has some great music. The title track is an epic twelve-minute journey of varied instruments and themes. At one point Indian sitars are heard along with bagpipes. Tuatha do have a very signature style in their keyboards which are pretty much the same through the whole album only varying slightly. The keyboards do have a slight progressive edge and shine quite well. On “Brazuzan,” the opening track, the addition of a flute ties the melody together well. In addition to guitars, many other stringed instruments are plucked, fiddled, and riffed on to achieve an interesting sound. This track has a nice solo which sadly there aren’t too many of on this album. The bass work on this track is pretty tight and the drumming is solid on the whole album. In terms of drumming, you can hear a little more than standard metal drumming on some tracks. Often more ethnic Brazilian patters are favored. The vocals are interesting because they are almost convincingly Irish. The only other Brazilian vocalists I’m familiar with are Andre Matos and Max Cavalera. Both have distinctly different styles than Bruno Maia who handles Tuatha’s vocals. In addition to the leads, there are many choruses and female vocals as well. “The Last Pendragon” is a much harder track sounding almost like something Symphony X might feature. The vocals are completely different, departing from the more traditional Celtic style vocals to death growls. The keyboard solo intro functions well to draw the listener in and the flute solo is good for establishing a headbanging main section. The breakdown is slower and more melodic and Maia’s vocals shift to sounding like Peter Murphy of Bauhaus. Say what you want about this man, he has perfected several different and distinct vocal styles. “Abracadabra” is more of a traditional Celtic track again with a duet of male and female vocals and the tribal drumming mentioned earlier. Unlike the other songs, it is more of a folk song and something that would be sung around a campfire. “The Wondering” and “The Last Words” are similar in the folky feel and slow tempo. “The Wondering” is basically a duet between acoustic guitar and flute while “The Last Words” focuses more on traditional song structure and sounding something like a down tempo Manowar track with much more instrumentation.

Overall if you like Cruachan or Celtic metal in general, you should give this disc a listen. I would have liked it to be longer and have more traditional instruments played on it but I cannot fault the wide variety of styles. The songs are quite unique and many different genres and influences can be heard in each track.