DREAM EVIL – Dragonslayer

Last year, Sweden gave us the much over-hyped Lost Horizon, a band that, looking back, did fairly well. It’s getting hard to do something original in heavy metal, and Lost Horizon proved just that, musically as well as imagewise. This year, Dream Evil is the next thing. What do these bands have in common? Well, if it wasn’t for Hammerfall and their sales figure, they wouldn’t even have formed. Soundwise, Dream Evil is even closer to Hammerfall than Lost Horizon, and a couple of the songs actually reach the same level Hammerfall is on. Of course, the band will be the first to tell you that they have always loved eighties heavy metal, and I guess they’re right. But why come out now and sing about dragons, kings and flames? Speaking of dragons, singer Niklas Istfeldt has a strong Swedish accent to his English. The way Swedes can’t say the English “G” is amusing, and dragon is another word that comes hard for him. (I didn’t mean to compare him with a dragon, if that’s what you thought…)

Dream Evil save their ass due to good songwriting. The three first songs are good heavy metal, and there are more. First I thought the band was just a big joke when I heard the lyrics to “Heavy Metal In The Night”, that they are out to make fun of all the fans of Hammerfall, who not necessarily see where it all comes from (Accept, Helloween etc.) And regardless of what they say, I find it hard to believe that the boys didn’t roll around on the floor laughing when they wrote the lyrics. “Heavy Metal…” has a riff that remind me strongly of Chinchilla’s “Living On My Own”, just a coincidence though. “H.M.J.” (stands for Heavy Metal Jesus), doesn’t only remind you of Stryper lyrically, I can simply imagine this song on an album by the fabulous Michael Sweet. Not at all original, very Swedish, with a handful of potential hits with the young audience, Dream Evil is here to stay (for a little while).