Room One

Dimansion is Symphonic Metal band hailing from Greece. The band was formed in 2006 and their 2008 release “Room One” is their debut full-length, distributed by relatively new Greek label Emotion Art Music. When looking up some info on the band I encountered comparisons with Nightwish (no big surprise seeing the bands genre tag), but also Epica and Theatre of Tragedy.

The album starts out with high emphasis on the symphonic elements of the bands music, with a two-and-a-half minute keyboard intro, accompanied by choir chants. The first “real” track “Precious Image” sets the stage for the rest of the album. The keyboard remains prominent during most of the album, but leaves enough room for the guitar riffs. There are some nice riffs that remain mid tempo most of the time and there is even some room for a guitar leads. Halfway through the album though, the band gradually changes their style a bit, with the songs being notably slower, before speeding up again for the albums best track “Wolfs Eyes”. The track has a driving melody and strange synthetic keyboard sounds (that work great though) that give the song an aggressive feel.

The vocals are handled by female singer Chrissa, who has a very enjoyable voice. She sings in a clear voice most of time, when she has a relatively high pitch. She is also able to cross over in semi operatic passages though, which she also pulls of with ease. Seeing the band is from Greece, it is also worth noting all the bands lyrics are in English.

I was expecting a great production, seeing the album is released through a label. Sadly though, the production is not consistently crystal clear. Don’t get me wrong, it is still relatively good, but seeing even demo bands seem to achieve relatively good production nowadays, I was expecting better. Strange thing is that the keyboards and vocals are pretty well produced throughout the album, while the rest of the instruments seem somewhat muffled in some of the songs.

All in all Dimansion delivered a very enjoyable album. People that are allergic to metal that’s drenched in synths should steer away of this though. Luckily, I’m not one of those people and I’m certainly going to keep an eye on this band. If they can spice up their production I’m sure they can improve a lot on their next release.