DESTINY OF A DREAM

This French quartet was born in mid-90's in Cambrai, near the French-Belgian borders, giving life to an idea of keyboardist Vincent Hooge and drummer Emmanuel Delestre.The two were joined by Vincent's brother Matthieu on bass.After a long time spent in guitar players' rehearsals Xang finally found their fourth member on Antoine Duhem.In 1999 the first album of the band ''Destiny of a Dream'' sees the light, marking thie first ever release of the Swiss label Galileo Records.

A full hour of well-crafted, highly energetic and deeply melodic instrumental Progressive Rock is the type of music Xang had chosen and they did it quite well to say the least.This is an album with a very modern sound, plenty of technique thrown in as well as catchy grooves and flashy solos.It comes as an all instrumental version of late-ARENA, CAIRO, CRYPTIC VISION, MAGELLAN and the likes, maybe with a touch of DREAM THEATER at moments, creating soundscapes full of intricate melodies and demanding interplays.''Destiny of a Dream'' is an extremely tight release with a superb coherence from start to finish, filled with balanced compositions flirting with Heavy/Neo Progressive Rock due to melodic guitar textures and the strong amount of grandiose synthesizers surrounding, but the changing climates are also endless, making it a quite challenging work.Nornally I would get bored with an album having a similar style all the way, but Xang's performance is really inspiring, professional and really enjoyable.

This is some very cool modern instrumental Progressive Rock by our French amis, where Symphonic Rock meets Melodic Prog meets Heavy Prog in series of challenging compositions.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.