Week 32: Van Canto - Take to the Sky

The artist: Van Canto are no doubt an oddball. Out of all 52 artists featured in Monday Metal Treasures, they are the only one who play heavy metal a cappella. The only instrument they provide are drums but even if you don't consider the drums, the vocals are still sung in a heavy metal style. Van Canto have become notable over the last few years with covering heavy metal classics such as Fear of the Dark, Kings of Metal and Master of Puppets in a cappella. With these covers, you can tell Van Canto are here to do something different in heavy metal as well as enjoying themselves. It may look like a gimmick but why should the fun be taken away by anyone?

The album: Hero is Van Canto's second album where half of the songs are actually covers. Personally it would be better if they had a whole album dedicated to covers but the mixture of both original and covers works pretty well here and make them part of the album. Looking beyond the covers, they have great songs such as Speed of Light, Pathfinder and Take to the Sky. Definitely worth picking up this album for the original songs as well as the covers.

The song: It's funny to even describe the a cappella vocals here but the song starts off with some "dum dum duuum". Not all of Van Canto's songs consist of "rakkarakka" and "riddly diddly" (Ned Flanders, much?) but it's humorous to hear the backing vocals saying "one" constantly as part of the music that would have been instruments for any other band, The best of all about the vocals is Hansi Kursch of Blind Guardian as the guest musician. They even have a woman on vocals for one section of the songs so there's a nice variety of singers here. The only thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb is the solos. It's hard to tell whether they're actually guitar solos or the a cappella vocals immitating them. If it's the latter they sound rather fake and this is one thing they should improve on or try to avoid. Still, putting the solos aside, it's still lots of fun to listen to Van Canto, especially a song that features a well praised vocalist such as Hansi Kursch.