THE REIGN OF DREAMS

3.5 for sure

Until Rain is a young progressive metal band from Greece releasing so far a single full lengh studio album in 2009 named The reign of dreams, issued at Steel Gallery. I was very pleasent surprised , both musicaly and vocaly. I mean the voice of Damianos is very much like LaBrie, but fits very well in this context. Instrumental passages are realy awesome, there are some moments where truly band shines all over like on The Reign of Dreams , Room 1716, Adaptability or Departure. A fairly good album towards great, 3.5 for this album, while is nothing realy groundbreaking, is a good debute with good pieces. Fans of DT, Shadow Gallery might give this a try , worth it, maybe one of the best bands from prog metal from Greece in past years.

And so I have now worked back to the debut, which was released in 2009. The shredding here is really intense, and the impression is not so much of a progressive metal band, but more of a melodic metal outfit trying to work out how to make room for the keyboards, yet definitely using interesting time signatures and arrangements. Parts of this remind me of Threshold's debut 'Wounded Land', although Damianos-Cosmas Roussos's voice is more like LaBrie than Wilson. He is a fine singer, but did seem to have some problems with holding some of the high notes. But, this was the only album he made with the band, as he left to be replaced by current singer Yannis Papadopoulos in 2010. Overall, this is an intense album, with crunching riffs, as the band are out to make an impact, which they certainly do.

Incredibly, the band was formed 2004, in Thessaloniki Greece, by Orestis Fikos (bass), Lefteris Germenlis (keyboards) and Alex Hughes (drums) when the guys were just 14 years old, and certainly this album doesn't sound like the debut of some young unknowns. But, compared with their later works this is an unpolished gem with loads of promise, but yet to be fully developed. A strong album to be sure, but it pales against their later works, and it is with these that the intrigued need to start with, but then come back and find out how it all started. www.untilrain.com