Almah is a Brazil-based project, organized by Angra vocalist Edu Falaschi. It was released in Brazil back in 2006, and made available for the US in July 2007 courtesy of Candlelight Records.

The name of the album and the band here is a slight source of confusion; which potential buyer’s should be aware of. On the homepage of this project, the band and the album are both named Almah; although the band name at times is set to be Edu Falaschi’s Almah. US label Candlelight refers to the band name as Almah, and the album name as Edu Falaschi. Others file this release under artist Edu Falaschi, and album name Almah. All of this basically means that finding this release in a record store may take some searching.

Musically this album has its roots firmly in classic heavy metal. Quite traditional heavy metal guitars, and vocal delivery in the vein of Bruce Dickinson, are elements central on the songs here. The guitar sound is nice and crunchy; and modern production makes for slick sounding overall sound here.

Although this is a metal album, there really aren’t too many hard rocking tracks here though. The main focus on this release is on ballads; especially power ballads. Building up from mellow verses towards melodic, highly epic sounding traditional power ballad choruses is what is done most often here; although there’s a couple of fast, hard rocking songs too.

And it has to be said; Almah excels at those power ballads here. The rockers are mediocre at best on CD, the ballads and the power ballads are what makes this album an interesting release. The epic style of the power ballad in particular suits the voice talents of Edu Falaschi; although he shows how good his voice can be in even mellower settings on the stunning last track Almah too.

Overall this is a well produced and well performed release; and should be very interesting to people enjoying good old-fashioned power ballads.

My rating: 69/100