Skeletons Domination

Skeletons Domination is the second album from this Brazilian band and judging by the sound and quality of this new album, they must have paid careful attention to the reviews for their debut album Darkness and Light released in 2006. That album showed lots of promise but was plagued by a somewhat "busy" and overly ambitious sound, way too many predictable cliches and a vocalist that tried very hard to do the whole Michael Kiske/Timo Kotipelto/Tobias Sammett/Edu Falaschi thing yet just didn't quite have the power and range in his voice to do so. With Skeletons Domination, Scelerata produced the album themselves yet enlisted the services of Charlie Bauerfeind (Blind Guardian, Saxon) to mix and master the final product. The end result shows vast improvements over their debut album and has erased any shortcomings with that album in every sense of the word.

The bulk of this album falls into the progressive power metal vein with heavy influences from Helloween, Edguy, fellow countrymen Angra as well as little of the Dragonforce speed and zaniness. The opening track Enemy Within really caught me by surprise with it's chunky heavy Metallica style arrangement yet a soaring melodic presence still dominates the overall sound. Carl Casagrande's voice sounds amazing and strong not only here, but on every single track on this album; something that was lacking with Darkness And Light. Tempos for the rest of the songs range from wild and speedy Dragonforce like, especially Spiritual Path and Leave Me Alone to the very Angra flavored Surrender, The Turn and Forever and Ever, complete with a more progressive feel and the use of ethnic Portuguese instruments. Galloping power metal permeates Cancer with Phoenix Tales once again going for the chunkier metal sound. The arrangements still get a little "busy" at times but the band has made great strides in focussing their sound and infusing lots of soaring melodies and choruses into their songs. The lead guitar has also been "amped" up with some stunning speedy melodic solos, very emotional and expressive soloing and lots of harmony leads and even some Dragonforce like fretboard gymnastics.

All the power metal cliches are all still here with this album but the band has done a good job of putting their own unique stamp on the material here. A tremendous improvement over their debut album, this almost sounds like a whole new band. For fans of great classic sounding Euro power metal along the likes of Helloween, Edguy, Stratovarius as well as a healthy Angra influence, this band now shows that they have the talent, sound and all the tools at hand to compete with the big guns in the genre.