ALBUM REVIEW: Tales of Knights and Distant Worlds – Dreamslain
Norwegian epic metallers DREAMSLAIN have released their first full-length album, Tales Of Knights And Distant Worlds. A follow up to their 2019 EP Tales of War, this is an ambitious release clocking in at around 83 minutes across two discs. It is an inaugural showcase of DREAMSLAIN‘s unorthodox merging of epic metal’s muscular riffing with the free expression and experimentation of progressive rock, one for the brave…
The album begins with He Who Rises In Force. Immediately the DREAMSLAIN sound seems to have been lifted due to a slightly thicker production job, however it is not long before problems arise. The background riffwork seems awkward and clunky, unremarkable chugging riffs plod away in the distance, slathered in a bizarrely fitted keyboard leads which in themselves seem semi-improvised. The vocals then kick in, something which is by far and away this bands weakest point. They can be described as feeling as though vocalist Igor Jakobsen is mere inches away from the listener’s face, bellowing incoherently along to a half-forgotten song after a particularly heavy night.
This is a theme repeated heavily throughout. Particularly so in tracks like Knights Of La Mancha, which manages to sound like an amateur clumsily practicing his newly learned metal vocals over a b-rate JRPG soundtrack. The metallic backing is bland and uninteresting while the keyboard lead doesn’t seem to fit. It isn’t interesting enough to lift the backing up from its own murk and instead sounds like a separate second song playing across the top, disjointed and unappealing, showcasing just how disorganised the structure of these songs really are.
The mid point of this album yields some tracks which are not quite as dreadful as others. Unfortunately though, that means My Mask and Cosmonautics are elevated from “downright terrible” to merely “unremarkable”. However, these are mercifully forgettable bookends of possibly the album’s worst moment: The Fall Of The Elven Lord. Opening with piano accompanied by what sounds like a team of rubbish bards from the world’s feeblest renaissance fair we leap quickly into a faster, black metal-inspired passage. This section includes arguably one of the worst example of vocal prowess across heavy metal’s entire 52 year run. By this point, an unsuspecting ear may begin to suspect that this was in fact somebody actively trying to poke fun. Utterly abysmal.
Most listeners, if they have made it this far, should be aware that the final three tracks (clocking in at 29 minutes) do not provide an enormous raise in quality. There are attempts at Lord/Blackmore style keys and strings duels on Ownership Denied but they never feel like they are going anywhere and tend to just meander around the verses. Shadow Warriors is a struggle to listen to featuring yet another enormous and unstructured keyboard solo and Tale Of The Copper Guard, despite being the home of some of the album’s most coherent riffs, even sporting a fairly serviceable outro, would likely bore even the hardiest prog fanatic to tears across its fourteen arduous minutes.
By far and away the best track on this album is the bonus one. In Memory Of Sister Rosetta Tharpe is a blues influenced instrumental shredder. It is mercifully short but in its comparably tiny run time it shows the band are, in fact, capable and talented musicians. It also deserves extra praise for the choice to exclude those diabolically bad vocals. As a bonus track it seems like an odd inclusion as it only truly serves to highlight what an overgrown mess the rest of this album is, if DREAMSLAIN are capable of performing this as an aside to their usual material, what possessed them to go ahead with the unstructured and unsatisfactory formula they are using now?
Rating: 2/10
Tales of Knights and Distant Worlds is out now via self-release.
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