MANUEL BARBARÁ: Moonrise (PROGRESSIVE METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Until the age of sixteen, Manuel Barbará was generally only interested in computers, and the world of music was quite foreign to him. But musical discoveries would push him to take up the guitar. Manuel then embarked on three years of intensive practice and with the encouragement of his teacher Matthew Mills, he auditioned at Berkeley. Manuel studied classical composers as well as contemporary metal music and aims to combine both visions in his composition. It is in this spirit that he wrote his first album "Moonrise".

The first listening sensation is like a mix of metal power articulated around riffs with big saturations and disturbing rhythmic changes. We are clearly in the universe of instrumental progressive metal with a good dose of djent close to Periphery and Meshuggah. Manuel Barbará shows obvious technical facilities but we can't say that he's an adept of stacking notes, his favorite fields are riffing and rhythmic approach ('Moonrise', 'Children of Prometheus', 'Mirrors III') and rarely soli ('The God Complex').

Manuel Barbará's music is characterized by breathing moments in many atmospheric passages that take on a greater importance when they coexist with the metal component ('Mirrors I', 'The Nightmare Weaver'). Sometimes with arpeggios in clear sounds ('The Nightmare Weaver'), these breaths are sound experiments that set up intoxicating celestial atmospheres whose original harmonies contrast with those usually heard in progressive metal-djent and appear as a real asset ('Mirrors II').

Manuel Barbará's instrumental progressive metal will be able to seduce the amateurs of power and jerky riffs. His field of action as a guitarist confines him to a rhythmic approach which suggests that some more solo passages would not have been superfluous to give a little melodic lyricism and to attenuate the overwhelming djent phases. - Official website

MANUEL BARBARÁ

MOONRISE

AUTRE LABEL

PROGRESSIVE METAL