Through Sound Riot Records comes this fine looking album with cover artwork of no-one less than Jean Pascal Fournier (Avantasia, Edguy). “Theater Of Life” is the debut of Norwegian melodic power metal band Memorized Dreams, who could also count on the guest duties of Olaf Hayer (Dionysus, Luca Turilli). To top it off the disc was mastered by Tommy Newton (Victory, Elegy, Kamelot). Enough name dropping however, you probably want to know if this album is any good.
Memorized Dreams are more or less around since 1999, when guitarist Kee Jason founded the power metal band Symphonica Divine. Several years went by searching for an identity of their own – they were even called Dreamscape (not ‘the’ Dreamscape of course) and playing progressive metal for a while – which explains why it lasted until 2002 before anything actually got recorded. The demo “Mirror Of Life”, which featured vocalist Geir Ros?, opened a couple of doors and resulted in a 3-album deal with Sound Riot.
Before the recordings for “Theater Of Life” started, Ros? left and for a long time it looked like the band were going to enter the studio without a vocalist. Terje Har?y joined just in time though. Unfortunately he’s not the most gifted singer. His vocal range is OK and the sound of his voice is suitable for the power metal genre, but finding the rigt tone and keeping tune seem to be more difficult. What makes it worse is that the song on which the aforementioned Olaf Hayer takes care of lead vocals is by far the best on the album. There’s not much left to complain about though. Average power metal tunes alternate some quite good ones which leads to a decent overall result. More is needed to play a role in today’s crowded power metal scene however. (
SL)
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