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Nangyala - Born Gifted/Paragon

Artist:	Nangyala
Title:	Born Gifted/Paragon
Label:	self produced
Length(s):	25 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1999
Month of review:	08/1999

Line up

Daniel Woltgens - lead vocals
Peter Chattelin - bass, vocals
Pieter Hanja - guitars
Tom Spaapen - keyboards
Danyo Romijn - keyboards
Geronio Welling - drums

Tracks

1-2) Excerpts from Born gifted 3-5) Excerpts from Paragon

6)	Born Gifted	8.18
7)	Paragon	12.44

Summary

The second time I've received music of this band. Two songs with some excerpts. The line up has changed somewhat: both a new lead vocalist as well as a new guitarist.

The music

Skipping the excerpts we come to the two main songs totalling to over 21 minutes of music. Let's not beat around the bush: this is a good song. A strong performance by the vocalist especially and the song is also well-built with strong melodies. The first part of the song is somewhat neo-progressive with quite a lot of bombasm and a good performance of the lead vocalist. I'm less happy with the second vocalist who sounds too Dutch (hard to pin down what it is precisely that does this, but the fact is plain). The song becomes much harder in the second part approaching progmetal and at the end the melodies of the beginning return in a more powerful/bombastic way. Good start. It is striking that this song was written by the previous guitarist, Alex Armaos. The second track is Paragon. This track opens with acoustics and has more atmosphere and feel than the previous track, thus showing an entirely different side of the band with both Floydian guitarwork as well as progmetallic influences. The end features some notable guitarwork and a great buildup to a climax laced with some nice piano.

Conclusion

I think the music on this album both signifies a change of direction (more to the neo-side as well as progmetal) as well as a large improvement with respect to the previous disc. I could do without the vocals of the second vocalist on the first track, but the new vocalist sounds really good and is someone they should try to hold on to. Both compositions are marked steps forwards from the previous mini-cd and show a good sense of melody and strong build-up, fortunately not leaving out such things as emotion and variety. Time for a complete album I would say.