Album Reviews : Dream Evil – In The Night

Dream Evil are back with album number five In The Night, which is available now via Century Media, and it is a logical continuation of their distinctive style. Whilst it doesn’t really provide any surprises, assuming that you are familiar with what has come before, it is undoubtedly an incredibly catchy heavy metal album that serves to get the year off to a bright start.

As has always been the case on every Dream Evil album there are the obligatory paeans to metal scattered throughout In The Night. Whether it is the title track, the blatantly titled Bang Your Head (which carries distinct shades of Judas Priest), Electric or the classily titled Kill, Burn, Be Evil there is certainly no shortage of metal anthems to choose from.

Then there is the piano driven ballad aptly called The Ballad, no false advertising there, which comes across as equal parts drama and comedy. When its opening lines are “We are made of metal, our hearts are made of steel” you can just tell that it will be amusing and it does so without being flippant or disrespectful to the genre whilst potentially taking lighter waving to new heights.

As you could no doubt guess by now, this isn’t metal that takes itself too seriously but, in all honesty, that is surely one of Dream Evil’s greatest strengths. “In The Night” is a healthy conglomeration of anthemic heavy metal songs that are never overly complex or cerebral but are still honed to a fine point for maximum impact and their ability to get under your skin is felt right away and it would be hard to nominate a dud track.

Once again the album was produced by guitarist and main man Frederick Nordstrom at his Studio Fredman so it sounds flawless and the artwork courtesy of Gustavo Sazes (who has also done covers for fellow Century Media artists Arch Enemy, Krisiun and Firewind) looks magnificent, particularly on the limited edition that also contains two bonus tracks and a patch for the old denim jacket.

These Swedish metal gladiators, their words not mine, want only to “bring the power of Pure Metal to you”, again their words, and that is exactly what Dream Evil achieve on In The Night. It’s an album that unflinchingly puts fun back into metal and pays tongue in cheek homage to the music we all love and that should be reason enough to give it a listen. Bang your head indeed!

8/10

Band: Dream Evil
Album: In The Night
Year: 2010
Genre: Heavy Metal
Label: Century Media
Origin: Göteborg, Sweden
www.myspace.com/dreamevil
www.dreamevil.se

Track Listing:
1. Immortal
2. In The Night
3. Bang Your Head
4. See The Light
5. Electric
6. Frostbite
7. On The Wind
8. The Ballad
9. In The Fires Of The Sun
10. Mean Machine
11. Kill, Burn, Be Evil
12. The Unchosen One