Zonata's third album is a blend of raw riffs, symphonic elements, progressive parts, melancholic lyrics and great melodic vocal lines.
The album is quite complex at times and it takes some listening before you begin to get familiar with the songs, here's a short comment to some of them.
The title track hits you right on with a rough and leading riff. The slower mid-section is a fantastic passage having a great jamming guitar solo, huge key arrangements and rock tight drums as central elements.
Visions Of Sorrow starts with a classic
Zonata trademark, a strange but nevertheless cool key melody. Some of the high pitch vocals don't sound that successful and a bit forced, a fact that unfortunately is true in other songs too. Anyway the chorus is sung with a suiting melodic approach and the track has a very solid rhythm base.
With
Blade Of The Reaper we are offered a very symphonic creation, I just don't think it brings too many interesting things with it. It has a tame chorus part but the minor breaks sound great.
The Mourner's Tale has a very catchy and driving chorus line and again the very powerful and well-played drums take on an important role. Some excellent and creative bass lines is another cool aspect, all in all a fantastic piece of melodic and yet forceful music.
Unleashed is one of the album's most thrilling and challenging pieces. A very technical drum approach and some immensely heavy guitar riffing lead the way into a fast and vigorous anthem.
A Dark Chapter is a very special and genius composition. The relaxing chorus is fitted into the song in an odd but splendid way and what an impressive mid-section, keyboard, rhythm guitar and drums creating a hymn-like passage that is extremely melodic.
In The Chamber is a great slow song with a penetrating melancholic dark mood. The biggest highlight being the bombastic and sorrowful chorus line, sung with a great heartfelt expression.
At the end we find
Heroes Of The Universe, another very good song. I find the chorus a bit stretched out but the intense drumming and the diverse and skillful guitar solo is marvellous contributions, and power is in no shortage at all.
Lyrically the songs explore themes of frustration, loneliness, vengeance, hopelessness and other sombre emotions; still an inner strength shines through the dark curtain here and there, generally the quality is fairly good.
Musically I'm pretty impressed with the technical level, the songs have many twists and changing breaks which makes this album very interesting to listen to. The central and innovative keyboard plays an important part on this disc, adding uniqueness and many striking moods.
Great guitar riffs and solo's, a very hard and solid bass, drums with lots of power and detail and intense vocals take up other leading roles. The vocals are very good most of the time and nicely fitting the musical frame, a few times they just become a bit over the top.
The production has a crisp, deep and very rich fundament, a top-notch sound to put it shortly.
All songs are on Buried Alive are good and the flow of the record is quite smooth, an immensely good piece of varied and well-put together Power Metal.
Written by
Tommy Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Show all reviews by TommyRatingsTommy: 7.5/10Members: No members have rated this album yet.
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