FORMLESS

Aghora’s second studio album features a lot of changes in their line-ups, including the vocalist Danishta Rivero who replaced with Diana Serra. The vocal change is probably the most obvious ones here, because Serra has a lower voice than Rivero. Personally, I prefer Serra’s voices more because I think it fits better with the band’s music. This album is heavier than their debut, although their debut is darker. You’ll still hear a lot of jazz influences here as well as eastern music atmosphere in a few parts.

On to the tracks now, the first track, ‘Lotus’ has an eastern music feeling to it. Then ‘Atmas Heave’ kicks out straight away with some heavy riffs and drumming. After that, you’ll hear the female voice and the song become softer and bit jazzier at times, and then it alters between the heavy parts and the softer parts, great track. ‘Moksha’ continues with relatively slower tempo at the beginning. This song features some cool guitar solo and drumming. ‘Open Close the Book’ has a cool opening with the guitar works. This song is quite heavy. Lots of guitar riffs and solos as well as powerful drumming dominate most part of it. ‘Garuda’ is a short instrumental track that seems like a jam between the musicians. It starts quite slow at the beginning and turns out heavier with the guitar riffs and solos. So far, the tracks are great and quite bring up the mood to listen to the album.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit of going downhill afterwards. Not that the rest of the album is bad, but it just sounds similar each other. They don’t sound completely same to each other though, only in some parts. However, these tracks still have their own moment. For example, ‘Dime’ has some quite nice jazz metal fusion which make album atmosphere a bit lighter. The same could also be said about ‘1316’, which has some nice jazzy solo near the end of the track. Well, actually I’d say that most of the later tracks here are not too heavy like the first 4-5 tracks, which is not bad at all. It’s only that somehow you kind of lost the feeling here, like there’s something lacking somewhere. But like I said above, the other track here is also quite interesting. The 12 minutes title track is probably a good example. It has a quite nice and interesting composition, and a good balance of jazz and metal. You’ll hear heavy riffs and drumming at times, but also some jazzy solo and bass lines at another. Last but not least, ‘Purification’ is a track in a similar vein with ‘Lotus’. This is a song that close the album nicely and at least gives you a break after the previous track.

Overall, this is a good album, though there aren’t really many changes in their sound from their debut. I think this album is only slightly better than their debut due to better production, although there are some tracks here that sound far better than the ones in their debut. Again, this isn’t the album that will beg to be played over and over again. It doesn’t mean that you won’t enjoy this album a lot, though. If technical metal is your thing, you’d probably like this album. 3 and a half star for me, but I think some of you would add another half star to it.