Dream Evil – In The Night

Do you remember the first time you listened to Judas Priest’s “Painkiller” or Hammerfall’s “Glory To The Brave”? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. The wall banging in your own bedroom, the screams of your mother and grandma and that shivers that kept running down your body.

Well, it’s a known fact that old school heavy metal is going through a long year decay especially during the 00’s. I’ll also have to admit that Dream Evil are a band that I didn’t respect so much. Songs like “The Book Of Heavy Metal” and the cover of “Number One”, yeah the song that won the Eurovision contest in 2005, used to make me laugh and when I first learned that they are going to make a new album, nothing really moved me into see what’s going on with Dream Evil.

First things first, “In The Night” restored my faith in old school heavy metal. Since the first sounds of “Immortal”, the opener of the album, it’s obvious that the band has worked seriously on this album. Dynamites like the ones on this album, “Immortal”, “In The Night”, “See The Light” and “On The Wind”, is not the stuff you hear every day. Most bands try to copy every good record that came out in the 80’s and 90’s without any sign of their own work. That’s not going to happen here. Great riffs and solos can be heard during the 50 minutes of this album even though Gus G is not a member of the Swedish band anymore. All that, combined with the high vocals of a very charismatic frontman, Fredrik Nordstrom and the conclusion that I’ve come to is that Dream Evil continue the legacy of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Manowar. Furthermore, Fredrik Nordstrom reaches the standards set by nowadays singers like Tim Ripper Owens (ex Judas Priest and Iced Earth) and Ralf Scheppers (ex-Gamma Ray, Primal Fear).

It’s also very difficult to gather your favorite songs in this album, something that is characteristic of the very good ones. Your opinion changes constantly on which are your favorites. Musically, the album follows the well known patterns of old school heavy metal. Epic, imaginary and melodic. In lyrics, we have the also well known scenery of catastrophe and disaster and heavy metal manages to survive.

Old school fans will be thrilled with this one and they’ll raise their fists up high hearing the songs of “In The Night”. To my opinion, Dream Evil, with “In The Night”, are established in the European triarchy of Heavy Metal along with Primal Fear and Hammerfall.