VIRGO

Released in 2001, Virgo is the fruit of a collaboration between two outstanding musicians in the power metal world, Andre Matos (Angra) and Sascha Paeth (Heavens Gate). The two musicians are here accompanied by a number of guest musicians, most of them coming from Paeth's inner circle (his producing buddy Miro plays keyboards, Robert Hunecke-Rizzo plays drums). With songs penned by both Matos and Paeth, one may be tempted to guess Virgo is some type of power metal super-project, perhaps at the intersection between Matos and Paeth's main bands. However, Virgo defies expectations and is in fact not a metal album at all. Instead, the two musicians blend together a variety of non-metal influences, from blues, to rock, to orchestral pop and even a touch of prog rock.

The heterogeneous influences create some nice variety which makes this a relatively easy album to listen to. The approach is light and balladish, with only few moments where the pace picks up and the guitars have bite ("Baby Doll", "Blowing Away"). The quality of Paeth's guitarplaying and Matos' vocals are unquestionable and the album is well played and well produced.

Although the album flows away pleasantly, I cannot help but feel underwhelmed by what I hear. There are only very few songs that are truly interesting on this record. The first two tracks are by far the best of the lot. They are both symphonic proggy affairs, with big melodies and some impressive vocal histrionics by Matos. The rest of the album is fairly bland. In truth I struggle to see the relevance of most of the music presented here and it's not quite clear to me what Matos and Paeth were trying to do. The run-of-the-mill blues rock of "Take Me Home" and "River", the tasteful but inoffensive pop of "I Want You to Know", the big band pop of "Fiction" where Matos attempts his best Sinatra impersonation, they all add extremely little to either their respective genres or to the two musicians' output.

I am not criticizing the fact that Matos and Paeth attempted to play music that is different from what they play with their main bands. To the contrary, I think it's great when musicians experiment with something outside of their comfort zone. But Virgo is so terribly pedestrian and unimaginative that it hardly qualifies as an experimental project and it ultimately feels like a waste of talent. If you want to listen to some blues rock or pop, there is so much better out there than what you can find on this album. If you want to listen to Matos or Paeth outside of their main bands, there are also better albums than this. My recommendation is to give this one a pass.