Amon Ra

There are two bands with this name: 1) Amon Ra are a hard rock band from Asturias, Spain 2) Amon Ra started in an era that was very confusion in Germany. The Wall came down and 'ossies' and 'wessies' came together. This group from Bamberg, Germany also combines the different cultures of the country. The singer even has his roots in America, and as a result his vocals are without any accent. With the inspiration of Rush, Dream Theater, Kansas and Rick Wakeman (according to the booklet), a great mixture of musical ingredients and fantasy is the result.

There are two bands with this name: 1) Amon Ra are a hard rock band from Asturias, Spain 2) Amon Ra started in an era that was very confusion in Germany. The Wall came down and 'ossies' and 'wessies' came together. This group from Bamberg, Germany also combines the different cultures of the country. The singer even has his roots in America, and as a result his vocals are without any accent.

With the inspiration of Rush, Dream Theater, Kansas and Rick Wakeman (according to the booklet), a great mixture of musical ingredients and fantasy is the result. Precarious Balance immediately starts with vocals and a piano. The Way gives a gives a good impression of what is going to come; powerful, melodic and theatrical music. Most of the songs are written by Thomas Wenzel (guitars) en Dierk Nelder (keyboards), as a result of which the compositions combine powerful en melodic parts. Besides that, there's a 'precarious balance' between the instruments, every musician has his own position in the music and every part is audible in the production. As the name of the group already shows, the group finds inspiration in the ancient Egyptian culture, but as many symphonic rock groups also in the writings of J.R.R.Tolkien.

This time not the well-known novel 'In The Lord Of The Rings' but 'The Story of Beren and Luthien' was used. The song of the latter title is a very nice instrumental epic of almost 10 minutes, with many changes in atmosphere and has a lot of place for different groupmembers to show their talents. Especially the part where the howling wolves come in is great. Besides this composition "Precarious Balance" features some other very theatrical songs, like In the Name Of Ra and the closing epic Illu-Vata. The album also features some more straightforward songs, like Two Suns, which is a nice slow rock song with great backing vocals and a fine bass part.

In The Name of Ra may be considered, looking at the name of the band, as the main, first statement of the band. For me it should have been the opener of the album. The song brings us a complete story with heavy guitars and daring vocal parts. Influences from the Middle-East, create the right atmosphere for this 'tale of the Gods'.

After the Priest has told his message a great passage with guitars follows. The Forest is a short and quiet instrumental that leads into Waterfall that starts like a ballad with acoustic guitars. Singer Scott Balaban has a fine voice and shows in this song that is able to reach great highth, when not screaming too much. I like his voice especially in the more fragile parts of the song. In the higher parts he loses a bit of the power, which he sometimes tries to overcome by screaming a little, which is unnecessary.

But not many times, I am so impressed by the variety of colours in a singers voice. 3) Serbian heavy metal band, started in 2007. and disbanded in 2008. They played mostly Iron Maiden covers, with few of their own songs included. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL..