FOOLED EYES

As a fellow Brazilian, it is truly a pleasure to review such an excellent release hailing from the motherland, particularly considering the relative dearth of prog metal outfits down there when compared to more successful death/trash/melodic metal bands such as Sepultura, Krisiun, Angra and Shaman.

In any case, Thessera's "Fooled Eyes" is a damningly good debut album from this band based in Juiz de Fora (Minas Gerais State in the southeastern part of the country), which harks back (with great comparative competence) to the initial and more melodic releases from mighty Dream Theater (and Kevin Moore's gifted composing skills), notably "When Day and Dream Unite", "Images and Words" and "Awake", with some Fates Warning-like influence to spice things up from time to time.

We are talking here about a very good production for a debut album, skillful musicianship and excellent balance between guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals - and no, they are not just a clone of any other "bigger" band out there - one can easily see some natural talent there.

The main highlights are definitely "The Gallery", "Broken Psyches", "Candlefire" and "The Leading Roles".

What about downsides? None really, apart perhaps from the relatively unnecessary and somewhat lame-sounding spoken parts à la Dream Theater's Metropolis Pt. II (well, it is a conceptual album after all)...but even these are far from impacting the greater good of the album, which easily deserves a 4+ rating; it would be great to see what these folks have in store for the coming years - hopefully they won't stop at the first album (given that their last public release is a 2009 demo song currently streamed on Myspace)..!