Swiss melodic death metal band Dreamshade formed in 2006, and in 2008 released their debut EP – To The Edge Of Reality. After two years of touring and playing festivals including Metalfest, Metalcamp and Summer Breeze open air, they signed to Spinefarm records. In January 2011 they released their debut album (What silence hides). Since then they’ve been busy touring, playing more festivals and recording their second album – The gift of life. Now that album is ready to be released. The band recorded the album in their own recording studio and then brought in Jacob Hansen, a man with a seriously impressive reputation, to handle the mixing and mastering.
Guitarist Rocco Ghielmini says of the album ”The songs’ lyrics are mainly about common life situations: questions, torments, thoughts, goals, facts and reality… we are not giving life lessons to anyone, on the contrary, some lyrics are about our mistakes. We often tell about what we learned from life no matter if it is right or wrong. The main message is to realize life is the most precious thing we got. And we got it for free… The gift of life”
The album gets off to a great start with ”Photographs” – a nice balance of melody and heaviness, some brutally heavy vocals shouting style vocals (with some clean vocal sections thrown in as well), and nice heavy guitar riffs.
The album continues on in the same manner before ”Our flame” slows things down. It’s a slow acoustic song with quite a gentle feel to it initially, but throws in a little hint that there’s a whole load of power just waiting to be unleashed, and the track gets heavier as it progresses. The clean vocals dominate for this song but there are some shouting style vocals too which work surprisingly well with the slow melodic pace of the music.
The last track on the album opens with piano alongside the guitars and drums – an unusual combination but it does work, and the piano is used at intervals throughout the song. It’s not common to hear piano sounding keyboards in a melodic death metal track, especially when it’s a good heavy track like this one, but it works really well and adds a nice feel to the song that helps it stand out.
A great album from Dreamshade – one that deserves to win them a load of new fans.
”The gift of life” will be released on 28th January 2013
Dreamshade are:
Kevin Calì – Vocals
Fernando “Fella” Di Cicco – Guitars / Vocals
Rocco Ghielmini – Guitars
Ivan Moccia – Bass Guitar
Serafino “Sera” Chiommino – Drums
Track listing:
1. Photographs
2. Your Voice
3. The Gift Of Life
4. Sandcastles
5. Consumed Future
6. Our Flame
7. Late Confessions
8. Sincere
9. Elisabeth
10. Wants & Needs
