BEST OF RA (IMHO)

I haven't been feeling well the last couple of days so I've been a bit more absent than usual, but I feel better today and I thought I'd introduce you to some new music. The band is named Ra (taken from the Egyptian sun god). Ra has been around since the late 1990's, but didn't release their first full length album until 2002. For a description of their music, I'll use Wikipedia's words in saying that it is "exotic not familiar, heavy not funky, direct not sophisticated, sensual not soulful, unrelenting not cathartic." That sounds like a pretty good description to me. I will add that they are very capable of doing one thing that I really dig, and that is going from a soft, acoustic sound to a very heavy sound in the same song. They do this often. But the heaviness comes from the guitars and drums. Because they have an excellent vocalist (Sahaj Ticotin), their songs are still quite melodic. These are all ingredients that interest me.

For this list, I went through the 3 albums I have (they have a fourth that I wasn't aware of until I started this, so I plan on getting that soon) and filtered out their best 22 songs. Of course I had to cut it to 10, which wasn't easy. But I did it. And I feel like I picked a very good sample of their music. I think it's safe to say that if you listen to this and don't like it or are just neutral, I wouldn't be able to change your mind with any of their other songs.

So here's the list, and I hope you enjoy some new music.

1. Broken Hearted Soul (Black Sun)
2. Rectifier (From One)
3. Only (From One)
4. Swimming Upstream (Duality)
5. Do You Call My Name (From One)
6. On My Side (From One)
7. The Only One (Duality)
8. I Believe (From One)
9. Say You Will (Duality)
10. Skorn (From One)

***Click the following link to listen to the Best Of Ra (IMHO)

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Permalink Reply by Scott on November 8, 2010 at 9:33am

Not bad! Haven't got through them all yet, but I like what I'm hearing

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Permalink Reply by Jon on November 12, 2010 at 8:33am

I agree with Scott on this, not bad at all. Fav song is "Do You Call My Name". Like the Eastern influences that crop up as well. Kind of prog rock, kind of nu metal. The only quibble I have is with the singer, he's not bad but doesn't sound different from a lot of the vocalists from the current crop of metal/hard rock bands out there.