I was very excited when I got this cd in the mail. Dreamscape`s first album "Trance- Like- State" was an album you either loved of hated. I thought it was a very good debut cd. Trance- Like- State got great reviews, but after seeing comments on various message boards and speaking to different people, I noticed that not everyone shared the critics views on that cd. Well, now the follow up is here and what can I say, this cd is just great. Following the footsteps of the debut, "Very" moves further into the Images and Words era Dream Theater style. Opener "When shadows are gone" set the standard of this album, starting off with a nice keyboard/guitar lead letting us know we are in for a real treat.
What first hits me about this album is the excellent production job, crystal clear, letting each instrument come to its right. The following track "Thorn in my mind" kicks off with some superb staccato guitar riffing, very powerful indeed, with floating keyboards filling the background. This song also has some serious combined keys/guitar solos as well as the typical time- changes that is the trademark of modern prog metal. These are also the main key words of the music style on this cd, powerful staccato riffing, tasty keyboards, time-changes and diversity within each song. They also use some pretty cool sound effects on both keys and vocals which I personally found rather original for this type of band. It`s obvious these guys are very skilled musicians and deserve credit for that, but they also deserve credit for creating good melodies which is not something we should take for granted even if you are skilled musician.
The whole album follow in the same wonderful style as the two opening tracks and gets surprisingly heavy and powerful on some occasions, and they manage to maintain the high quality on each song. Fans of Images and Words era Dream Theater, Atmosfear, Arkhe and Zen will swallow this thing raw. I believe even those who didn`t like the first album will love this album. The only weakness I can find on this album is perhaps the vocals. I can picture myself some people having problems with it, as Huby Meisel has a very soft and smoothe voice, very much alike the vocalist of Canadian pomp/aor band Korea which released one album in the beginning of the 90`s. On the other hand, he sings very good and much better than most of the vocalist on todays independent and major prog metal releases, so this should not be a big problem. Anyway, fans of melodic prog metal will have no problem enjoying this little piece of plastic as the melodies and the playing is of a very high caliber. The cd has 11 songs, while the promo cd has one extra song which I suppose is a Japanese bonus track.
I`m really excited to see what these guys can come up with on their next album, if they keep growing like this the next album will be sensational. A must for every melodic prog metal fan.