| CD REVIEW Dreamtide |
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Band : Dreamtide Hold it, stop press...this is one hell of a good band! And when you look at the members playing in this Hannover based Melodic Hard Rock quintet, that's really not so surprising! Guitarist Helge Engelke, keyboardist Thorsten Lüderwaldt, and drummer CC Behrens also happen to play in German act Fair Warning. Bassist Franz Bucholz (who replaced Thunderhead bassist Ole Hempelmann last year, and is the only line-up change since this band's conception) played with Scorpions until 1992, and together with singer Olaf Senkbeil (formerly of Jack's Hammer) he's also been a member of the band of guitarist Uli Jon Roth (also a former Scorpions member, but then from the '70s). The original quintet first came together in 2001, delivering the Here Comes The Flood that same year through quality label Frontiers. 2002 would find Engelke contributing to the Genius project and Lana Lane album Project Shangri La.Two years after the debut followed sophomore album Dreams For The Daring, on the same label. Then, Fair Warning reunited to great success, and for a while it kinda looked like we were no longer to expect anything from Dreamtide (especially when the singer had joined Uli Jon Roth in September 2005, after providing backing vocals for Helloween earlier that year)...but here they're back again, and a welcome return it is indeed! Album opener "A Fool's Crusade" encrusts itself into your mind from the first time you listen to it, and the same counts for a lot of the other 13 songs on the album. There's a somewhat Oriental influence in "Your Beat", and the opening of "King Of Scum" has a native American (say Indian) influence. Senkbeil truly has a voice to die for, and of course lovers of Melodic Hard Rock already know Engelke's typical (sometimes remeniscent of violin play) soaring guitar work. With additional backing vocals where needed (and beyond, as extra layers in the music overall) the overall sound is one to dream away on at moments (check out "Download A Dream", for that matter), with the keyboards providing both more backing sounds as additional prominent tones. The whole founded on the sturdy and rock-steady span of versatile drums and rhythmic bass. A lot of the songs have a calmer passage incorporated in 'em, giving much of the album a semi-balladesque overtone, but the true ballads on the album remain "Dancing When The Night Falls", the partly fake acoustic "Tell Me How It Feels" (a song which would stand proudly in the "ballad catalog" of a band such as Scorpions, to make an adequate comparison). The boys make a good example of how thin the line can be between making a semi ballad and a more energetic song, by finishing the album with a "reprise" of "Download A Dream", this time in a more energetic mode, but equally as thrilling as the first version!At myspace.com/dreamtideband, you can find full-length versions of "Tell Me How It Feels" and "The Vow", plus a "Dreamdeliver Propaganda" track, which is a collage of shards from 8 songs off the album. With Dreamtide, Metal Heaven definitely has a winning kinda band on their roster! And I hope that Dreamtide is more than just a project, so they can tour, and I hope that Metal Heaven can provide with the necessary support to have the band tour the rest of Europe outside of Germany as well...because I'm sure that would greatly benefit the album sales ànd an increasing fanbase! In Japan, the album was already released on May 21, and I'm sure there was again a bonus track involved, but whether that's worth the trouble of getting thàt version for, is a thing best decided on person-by-person! 95/100 Tony. |