O TERÇO II

After the EP O Visitante. Jorge Miden, founder member and until then the main-man behind the name O Terço, had disagreements with the other members and left the group. Sérgio Hinds decided to register the name O Terço to avoid future legal actions by Amiden. For all intentions and purposes Hinds now "owned" the name and all other members would gravitate around him from that moment on. Following a new single ("Ilusão de Ótica" and "Tempo é Vento") the group decided for a much heavier rock approach, that is reflected on their second album called simply Terço (without the "o", a.k.a. O Terço II). The group had the help of some heavyweight guests for this release like the celebrated saxophonist Paulo Moura, percussionist Chico Batera and Luiz Paulo Simas (ex Modulo 1000), probably the best rock keyboards player in Brazil and one of the country´s first expert in the then groundbreaking moog synthesizer.

Side A is mostly a heavy rock/power trio effort, in songs like Deus and Lagoa Das Lontras, while the acoustic Estrada Vazia is their link with their former work backing several brazilian acts. Você Aí showed some surprising blues/funk lines and Rock Do Elvis is wistful little rocking track. Side B is an ambitious 19 minute suite divided in five parts. A mix of psychedelic ambiance, heavy rock guitars and progressive leanings. While quite daring and totally novelty in Brazil at the time, it´s not entirely satisfying. You can tell a lot of influences here, specially of english bands of the period like Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin and Cactus.

On the plus side you can say the production here is way better than all their previous recordings, with a very professional sound recording and very well balanced overall. A real feat for the time. Their vocal prowess continued to grow, being better than 95% of all brazilan bands then. Hinds proves himself as a brilliant guitarist too. He could play just about anything. But obviously the band was lacking a strong sense of direction (heavy rock? progressive? Psychedelic? Acoustic?). Rather than showing versatility, O Terço II presented us a group that could handle all those styles, but didn´t know where to go yet. Of course the band would solve this problem by the time they recorded their third CD, the groundbreaking Criaturas Da Noite in 1974. But that´s another story

All in all I found O Terço II a good rock album. It was very well recorded, written and performed. Not entirely convincing as a whole, but a sure step forward in their career. Looking back is obvious that something was still missing. Like Uriah Heep´s first attempts, this a tentative work.

Final rating: 3 stars.