When you get an album to review, the first impression you get is the cover of the album, holding the artists name and album title. My gut feeling on Enzo And The Glory Ensemble's album In The Name Of The Son says to decline the review request, just because I am not the right person to review music with heavy religious music, no matter which religion we are talking about. But curious as I am, I checking who's also playing besides initiator, composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Enzo Donnarumma. Seeing those glorious names who are participating, it must be hard to come up with a bad or even a mediocre album, these guest musicians are really high class and no less than impressive. Names like guitar player Marty Friedman, vocalist Ralf Scheepers of Primal Fear, vocalist Kobi Farhi, known from Orphaned Land, drummer Mark Zonder who used to be a Fates Warning member and two members of Shadow Gallery; vocalist Brian Ashland and guitarist/ keyboard player Gary Wehrkamp. Digging deeper, it turns out In The Name Of The Son is part two of a series of albums and I kinda missed the first one, called In The Name Of The Father. Nevertheless, let's turn up the volume and see what Enzo and his Ensemble brings us. The opener; Waiting For The Son sounds very promising, Marty Friedman plays a solo over music that would have suited his solo albums Scenes or Introduction. Albums I still cherish. When The Tower Of Babel continues, a combination of religious choir music and bombastic progressive metal takes over. Although Enzo is a great guitar player, his vocal abilities are something different and I wished he would have left those duties to the amazing guests he invited to be part of the album. Even Brian Ashland can't save Luke 1:28. Fast forward some tracks, Psalm 133 is a quite decent track, mainly because of the participation of Kobi, who gives the track the typical Orphaned Land touch, only the over orchestrated parts give me the impression I am listening to two songs at the same time. The Trial is an epic track, that holds nice brutal parts, but again the song is very over orchestrated. Curious of Ralf Scheepers addition I skip to Te Deum and If Not You. Unloaded the CD, it's way too much for me. If you are a religious person who wants to listen to Enzo's fairy tales, please be my guest. Musically I am sure he is quite capable and everything Enzo,s singing and playing definitely sounds really sincere, but for me it's way over the top, especially the over orchestrated compositions. I think I will happily remain on the dark side. My initial thoughts were right, I'd better leave this music to the one who can appreciate religious music. **+ Pedro Bekkers (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
