Shaaman
Reason

I can't stand constantly seeing your black keyboard in my line of sight anymore. You're stealing my eyesight, tiring me out, making me irritable and grumpy. I hate you, my dear notebook, just know that! I may have bought you and longed for you for months, but in the end, you are the master, and I'm the slave, and being aware of this situation infuriates me quite a bit. Otherwise, how on earth can I explain that after 10 hours on the PC, instead of going to have a beer with friends, I prefer to stay here pressing keys randomly, letting words and sentences form almost automatically? Right now, I don't even know what I want to talk about. An album? Maybe.

Today has been a particularly sad day, and perhaps I just need to vent a little: so you are no longer a reason for my anger, but you even become a precious tool for venting my frustration. God, how fickle I am!!! Two seconds ago, I wanted to throw you on the ground and destroy your memory, and now you've become my buddy. What the hell am I doing here??? Perhaps unconsciously, I'm thinking that a way to feel better could be to present an album to the audience of this crazy site, among whom I count myself, an album that can at least partly embody the feelings I'm experiencing right now.

She, the jerk who betrayed me, used me, and then left me in the disgusting limbo of a damn pause for reflection that has lasted for months; she, the person I should hate and can't forget and send packing; she, who doesn't even deserve to be called by name, is always there, embedded in my thoughts. Today I even had the temptation to text her first. Damn, what a human case I've become! Luckily, I resisted, but even just the fact that I considered it makes me feel like crap and makes me want to look in the mirror to spit on my own face. Sometimes I wish I were Edward Norton and could fight myself, like in that scene from Fight Club. I would deserve it, for having been stupidly in love at first and for being so weak and fragile now that I can't close the door on a dubious floozy who is eating away at me. Too bad that, for the first time in my life, I love her. I look around: damn, I'm in a dead end...

I have several hundred CDs in my collection, but do I own one that can truly encapsulate what I feel at the moment: a mix of anger, melancholy, sweetness from the memory of a past that's no more, and foolish hope for the near future?

I search and then realize that I am the very fading figure walking in the fog, along the tracks heading into the "unknown". Yes, I've just decided: I will talk to you about "Reason," the second album by the Carioca band Shaaman, born from the split of Angra after the release of "Fireworks".

Anger: a wonderful sensation and the ultimate expression of our being alive. Uncontrollable, furious, blinding, and irrational. The blood pumps through your veins, and you want to scream your state of impotence because you're trapped in a situation that suffocates you, devours you. The stubborn and heavy riff of Turn Away on the verge of thrash, closely followed by the unusually rough voice of a furious André Matos, perhaps well represents the daily anger I feel about how I've ended up. It's not her fault, I'm the one at fault...

Melancholy: you don't feel like doing anything. You no longer feel alive, everything proceeds almost as a routine. A thick gray fog envelops you and doesn't allow you to see the beautiful things that could happen to you: they slip away, and the only thing you can do is lock yourself away, thinking of the past and how nothing will ever be the same again. Melancholy goes hand in hand with regret, and I find myself deeply in the very sad melodies of the paced single Reason, or in the lighter ones of A Born To Be.

Memory: have you ever seen the movie with Jim Carrey, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? Sometimes I wish I could completely forget her, but there are too many things, people, places, situations that make me recall the best, sweetest, "unrestorable" moments. Innocence is a beautiful ballad with that endless crescendo sung divinely, bringing a flood of emotions to the surface all at once. An almost overwhelming sensation, leaving me with a glimmer of hope.

Hope: the strange sensation of being able to make it, of managing to reassemble the puzzle or try to move forward without looking back. It's a situation marked by uncertainty, a half-conviction of success that, for a moment, makes you feel good, and if it doesn't come true, it makes you fall flat on the ground without warning. Iron Soul with its more marked tempos, or the ethnic strains of Rough Stone.

This album is far from being a masterpiece, but who ever said I wanted to review a top-notch CD? I feel well represented by the music of the aforementioned product from the sad and melodically powerful soul. Metal, classy rock, without particular technical ostentation and also very different from what Matos has brought to light so far. If even he managed to forget the sound of Angra, why can't I forget her?