Angra

Apparently this album has already sold something in the neighbourhood of 100,000 copies worldwide, but I'm willing to wager a very large portion of my life savings that most, if not all, of Rebirth's sales have been on European and South American soil. But that many thousands of people can't be wrong, can they? Well, sure they can, because there's no explicable reason why this has racked up as many sales as it has. Yes, it's a very classy and competent display of power metal songwriting and musicianship. The guitars sound exactly like you'd expect them to sound and exactly like they sounded when the majority of these riffs were played by Fates Warning, Helloween, Dream Theater and Stratovarius. Their new singer has the stratospheric pipes of one Bruce Dickinson, and they really know how to keep things melodic and catchy, especially during the synthesisation of their native Brazilian tribal sounds with flashy keyboard metal on "Unholy Wars," and the classically-influenced guitar solos, but there definitely isn't enough going on that's much different than any other power metal act you care to mention to logically warrant the insane sales totals. They do what they do well, but to the tune of six digits? Nah.