Band:	Kapel Maister
Album:	Into Salvation
Style:	Symphonic heavy metal
Release date:	2005
A review by:	Jeff

01. Immortal Kiss
02. Never Too Far
03. Glory
04. Thunderforce
05. Keeper Of My Heart
06. The Final Symphony
07. When Everything Ends
08. Sunshine
09. Darkness & Tears

Kapel Maister is a young band from Argentina that plays a nice Symphonic/Neo Classical Metal. With a classical line-up but with in addition two lovely female singer Luciana Queirolo and Mariela Lemos (who both sing a la Tarja Turunen) the band releases this year their first album "Into Salvation".

I'm sure that a lot of you are already saying to themselves "hoo damn one more Nightwish clone", I can understand this reaction. But however Kapel Maister is really different actually because the band doesn't play Power Metal or at least if it is Power the Classical Music spirit is predominant on this record and this is really original. If you want to know how it sounds, you can imagine an Adagio with a lot of Keyboard (in general with the sound of the harpsichord) plus female singers who sing with real symphonic voices. The result is nice because it doesn't sound like the majority of the Female singer combos. With Kapel Maister we're in front of a new Nightwish, the band has its own personality and the fact that they chose to play "Classical" music mixed with Metal instead of play basic European Power is a great choice.

I don't say that "Into Salvation" is a perfect album at the opposite. The sound of the keyboard doesn't sound really good sometime (a bit too much artificial) and the voices of Luciana and Mariela can be a bit "hesitant", not perfect. But on the other hand this is a young band and when I see the level of these musicians (the guitarist Gonzalo is really impressive) I have some really good hopes for them. "Into Salvation" is well produced with some nice compositions (especially if you like Classical Music) and really this first album surprises me.

As you can see, and even if Kapel Maister also follows the trend of all those Symphonic bands with Female singer, we can find again some good things nowadays. "Into Salvation" is a great surprise for me and really I recommend it to all the ones who want to find a nice "Prog" (in the Adagio spirit) album. I will keep an eye on them, and I'm sure that I won't be the only one?