The Gift of Life

This album just kills it. There are cases when a group of people reach the peak of their performance which outdoes everything they did before and probably will never accomplish anymore again. The Gift of Life is just exactly that achievement for Dreamshade. When the raw materials are carefully chosen, the gears lock in place seamlessly and the artist musters all his magic to sculpture the yet unknown.

With the first song there is an immediate slap into the face of the listener. Prominent guitar melodies jump out of the speakers, ultra-catchy yet not soaked into commercial goo. Fella, the primary song writer laid down this time superb riffs, very metal yet understandable ones thus the listening is a pleasant experience. The song writing to some extent is similar to what can be heard on the first album but here it’s raised to the next level. Overall the riffs, the melodies, the structures are much more mature, the sound is true new gen metalcore.

I say metalcore, because the original singer left after the first album and with the arrival of Kevin Cali the death metal also was sort of abandoned. This is however not a problem as Kevin is a very much adept person in that position. His grunts/shriekings are top quality, better than his predecessor’s and in addition his clean vocals are majestic too. The brutal vocalization takes up around 70% of the disc which is perfect. The lyrical style changed too which I believe is once again the merit of Kevin.

At the same time the synths were reduced to a minimum, you can barely count instances when this fine instrument is used, however as the guitars deliver melodic notes all of the time, plus there are the clean vocals too, the music really doesn’t need more synths than what is included already. The cleverly structured, groovy bases are still present, these didn’t wither after the first album.

It’s hard to choose the best song from this bouquet, I would vote for Wants & Needs, Consumed Future, Your Voice, Photographs if I have to. Generally the fast paced parts are overlaid with astonishing thrash metalesque riffs, the dudes should certainly write more such stuff. The only song I always skip here is Our Flame, which is a short ballad-ish piece, unfortunately feels surprisingly blank and pointless, even with those furious shoutings throughout. Otherwise this is a nearly perfect disc and at the time of this review it’s also the best work by this band.