Dynamic Lights - Resurrection - 2001
intro
Because of progVisions "vacation" during some months last year, we are now focusing on new CDs released by well known bands. Anyway, as we always did, we are going to go on promoting all kind of new bands who ask for an opportunity in the progressive scene.
This is the case of Dynamic Lights, four young guys who come from Italy showing us that in that country there are not only lyrical bands. Marco Poderi (guitars), Raffaele Mariotti (bass), Matteo Infante (vocals), Giovanni Bedetti (keyboards), and Simone del Pivo (drums) have self released a very interesting twenty six minutes long mini-CD with surprise inside.
review
"Resurrection" has two long tracks ("Straight from the sun" y "Rescued from oblivion"). The first one begins with "Breath of the earth" (6:01), and nice guitar arpeggio's and keyboard layers precede and support the first vocal melody, a bit repetitive. When I was already thinking this band was going to be another pseudo-metal-band, the bass appears and Dynamic Lights show their musical purpose. Of course this is progressive metal, but this band is very original. The track is developed with lots of rhythm variations with and great skill by all the musicians. But there are not cheap fireworks. Within the song we can notice the frenetic skill of the drummer -absolute protagonist and very original -, a guitar player who develops interesting rhythms instead of the typical metal prog heavy riffs, a great bass player, and a keyboardist who creates nice melodies with synth and piano sounds. Anyway, and although the way of playing is very original, the track is not very innovative. The second part of the suite "Breath of the sun" (6:53) begins with a colored palette of percussion and piano with a nice flanged guitar solo and epic synth sounds. In the middle of the track the song becomes heavier with treated vocals and powerful guitar riffs and another great guitar solo, although I prefer how the guitar player plays the rhythm guitar. Another thing I think they can change is that the vocalist sings in very high tones. He has a great voice and he never sings out of tune, but I think that lower tones would fit in the music better.
"Rescued from oblivion" begins with "Awakening/Consciousness" (8:41). The beginning is, again, a sweet piano, percussion and guitar. Quickly the band gets crazy with the typical prog metal fury. The drummer is a cyborg, a machine of precision. It´s really worth listening to the whole CD hearing only the percussion. Although he has an hyper-metal appearance (a Dimmu Borgir T-shirt?... my God!), Simone is, undoubtedly, the most progressive element in the band. The track intercalates powerful and softer moments in a crazy spiral, remaining to bands like Pain of Salvation in some moments. The eight minutes lengthen themselves among dozens of rhythm variations. "Deception/Revenge" (4:52) is, undoubtedly, the most experimental song. Very tense and varied and with a great instrumental deploy in the middle. As a gift we have inside the CD a ten minutes long video file and we can see how is the band in studio.
Dynamic Lights is a new band who looks for a place inside progressive metal genre. The dangers of this style are the repetition of schemes and the stupid senseless pyrotechnic. Fortunately this is not the case, and, well, I could give them one more half star, but since they are newcomers in the business I am sure they will release a great first long CD. And the compliments without measure are not good for musicians who have a great future ahead.
conclusion
If you like progressive metal and you are bored of listening to Dream Theater clones, there are some new bands (Fig Leaf, Chiaroscuro, etc.) showing the evolution of the genre. And, of course Dynamic Lights is one of these bands.