Archangelica - Like A Drug

(CD 2013, 48:04, Lynx)

The tracks:
  1- Into Unknown(3:18)
  2- Like A Drug(4:45)
  3- Confession(4:22)
  4- Night Passage(6:52)
  5- Midnight Train(4:46)
  6- Cathedral(6:15)
  7- The Journey(5:45)
  8- Let Me Stay With The Trees(5:58)
  9- When All Is Gone(6:03)

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Archangelica are a Polish band founded in 2004 and consisting of Maciej Engel (guitars), Arek Gawdzik (guitars), Piotr Brzezicki (drums), Krzysiek Sałapa (vocals) and Jakub Kolada (bass). The band recorded already two mini-albums: Archangelica (2007) and Where Are You Now? (2009). Like A Drug is their first full-fledged album that I quite like actually. The music is rather melodic, diverse and features a lot of nice guitar solos.

The album opens with the instrumental Into Unknown which already represents the typical style of Archangelica with lots of keyboards, fine melodic guitar solos and great melody lines. Unfortunately their singer is the weakest link in this band. His voice sounds too nasal and too monotonous to really enjoy his singing. Take for instance The Journey which has a lot of singing, but in fact it's one of the most boring songs on Like A Drug due to the sometimes rather irritating voice of Sałapa. I think the best song on the album is When All Is Gone, a mid-tempo prog rock track with a howling guitar solo and some great tempo changes. The worst songs are the already mentioned The Journey and the pop-like Midnight Train. I would give this band some more time to develop and, who knows, maybe they surprise me with a great album in the future.

*** Martien Koolen (edited by Peter Willemsen)

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