Neverland - Reversing Time
AFM Records

file under heavy / power metal

Nima: Neverland is a new project of Turkish power metal band Dreamtone and the Greek singer Iris Mavraki. The idea for this project came to life in 2006 and everything has been very fast ever since. The band quickly signed a deal with AFM Records and started working on the debut album ‘Reversing Time’. And just at the end of last month the album was fact. The band has made a lot of effort for this album. Not only have they hired a complete orchestra, they have also managed to get a few interesting guest musicians. Besides that they have let Leon Zervos, who has worked with names like Aerosmith, Skid Row, INXS and Duran Duran in the past, take care of the mastering.

Neverland’s music can best be described as melodic power and progressive metal. Unfortunately the whole is not very original and shows quite a lot of similarity with especially German and Italian colleagues. The album contains everything a good album in this genre needs: fast double bass drums, fast and yet melodic guitars, beautiful vocals, beautiful piano and keyboards and of course a lot of atmosphere and bombast. The album opens convincingly with ‘Shooting Star’, but it’s with the second song ‘To Lose The Son’, on which the band really takes hold of your attention. For this song they have managed to have Blind Guardian/Demons And Wizards’ Hansi Kürch do the vocals, who takes the quality to a higher level. His magnificent voice is a reason for the regular Goosebumps and the song would have fitted perfectly to one of Hansi’s albums. But that is also a bit of a problem with this album, because with this song the band already gives away the song that they can’t outdo. I’m not saying that the rest of the songs are of lesser quality, it’s just that this song is an absolute highlight.

Besides Hansi the band has also got Tom Englund (Evergrey) and Mike Baker en Gary Wehrkamp of the prog-masters Shadow Gallery to do their trick. But the Neverland musicians also do a tremendous job and bring the song with audible enthusiasm. Iris’ voice fits well to this type of music and her contribution to the beautiful (piano) ballad ‘Everlasting Tranquillity’ (which would have fitted well on Luca Turilli’s solo bedut) and the beautiful, folky ‘Mountain Of Judgment’ is very strong. Within the right mood you might even find yourself whipping off a tear or two.

On one hand ‘Reversing Time’ is a great album and will surely apply to the fans of power, progressive and symphonic metal. On the other hand you can say that it’s “yet another” album in this genre… but also one that deserves to be heard.

Rating: 84/100 (details)

http://www.in-neverland.com

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