5TH SEASON

Sadly 5th season might have to be labeled Dreamscape's unsurpassable legacy, with 3 major players having left the band right after it's release party performance. I wouldn't call it Dreamscape's swan song because the remaining gitarrist and drummer managed to stage a well acclaimed tour in 2008 using session musicians among them Mischa Mang of Ivanhoe fame. Still this record is something special.

The two opening songs 'Fed Up With' and 'Borderline' are well composed and performed - I am sure many a prog metal band would be happy to have written them - preparing a staging ground for the title track, a 14 1/2 minute monster of genius and creative bliss that leaves the listener breathless and reaching for the repeat key at an instant. 'Deja Vu' serves as a little filler before 'Phenomenon' is unleashed at the audience, rich in intensity, a super thick canvas of sound wrapping itself around Roland Stoll's voice. What '5th Season' requires the 4th of an hour to unload, 'Phenomenon' keeps true to it's name and does it in an almost radio compatible timespan. This song will probably never ever leave my head, there were days when I went to sleep humming it and woke the next morning to continue humming it. With 'Different' and 'Point Zero' Dreamscape can once again demonstrate their ability to create contemporary progressive metal songs that just cannot raise the suspicion of being a waste of time, that spite their length because the minutes pass in a blur while the listener displays an insane grin on it's face.

'Farewell' finalizes the tremendous cut in the band's biography, but as with every farewell this is also a new beginning and surely only time will be a matter for Dreamscapes next output, if just it will be a creative behemont like this record.