SPIRAL WORDS

Spiral Words was another of album released by legendary brazilian band O Terço in the 1990´s. Sérgio Hinds, the only original member still on board, decided once again to make new musical (and line up) changes. Now with Edu Araújo (guitars, vocals), Beto Correa (keyboards), Max Robert (bass) and Daniel Baeder (drums), HInds takes the back seat for the first time in more than 20 years, allowing the new band members almost absolute freedom: on several tracks is Araújo who takes lead vocals and lead guitar duties. There is only one Hinds penned song in the entire CD and is a re-recording (Crucis, featured on 1992´s time Travellers). Their classic prog suite 1974 (from their best album Criaturas da Noite of the same year) was also re-arranged for this record.

Surprisingly the opener is a cover of Miles Davis, A Smile In Wave. That more or less set the tone of the CD: shedding away the modern prog/heavy style of Time Travelers, now they are playing in a much more jazz rock/fusion mode. Listening to the CD for some time leaves me the feeling that it would work much better if they had recorded a full instrumental album. The main impression is that the vocals (once again in english) are obtrusive instead of adding to the music (the thick brazilian accent does not help either). There are some obvious jazz-rock cliches around, but overall the quality of the songs are good. Unfortunately, the two re-recordings show what´s missing: good prog compositions that we all expect from the name O Terço (oh, how I wish they had used some other moniker for those projects!). Crucis and 1974 are way too different from the other tunes and they are the best around as far as I´m concerned. But the new arrangements don´t add much to their original versions. That tells it all. On the other hand, a few of the new tracks have a popish leaning that makes them too slick for my taste (My Universe is a good example).

If you like light jazz-rock/fusion then chances are that you might like this album very much. It´s very well performed, recorded and produced. The new players are obviously very skilled. But for me it´s not O Terço. it´s another band and Hinds lack of contributions only enhances this impression.

Final rating: 3 stars. Good, but non essential in any way.