The Dreams of Marquis de Sade

On my previous review of Show No Mercy's sophomore album "Watch Your Ears and Save Your Neck We Are Back to Our Second Attack!", I mentioned how the albums that were released after "Steelbreed" were done without the original member's permission. Well, I want to apologize for my misinformation, I was wrong. In fact the bassist and drummer, Jorg and Mike have appeared in all the Show No Mercy releases including the one we'll be taking a look at today. "The Dreams Of Marquis De Sade", while it screams pervertedness in the art direction department due to its highly sexist cover art, it's a criminally undervalued album that every fan of Teutonic heavy metal should dedicate some time and check it out.

Giving some backstory, I thought "Watch Your Ears and Save Your Neck We Are Back to Our Second Attack!" had some passable songs but all the tracks were mixed with high latency to the point where you could hear some fuzz in the background and as you read from my review of that album, the vocals were only done with falsetto (if you exclude some parts) and had no versatility. Thankfully, both of the aforementioned problems have been vanquished here. With the entry of the new Millenium, Ingo Nowotny presumably managed to buy much better equipment for recording.

As for the vocals, Michael Cloud sounds like a completely different singer here. while in the previous record he reminded me of Terry Glaze, it seems he blew his voice out enough to sound like Jeff Scott Soto (However I believe his tone comes closer to Tony Hedin of Hiroshima). And he sounds so damn good!! He follows a better direction, by showcasing his powerful chest voice but also does a favor to the listener who is a fan of his vocal style from the previous album, by hitting some gritty high notes in a few songs. In conclusion, the vocals f**in kick ass in all of the songs.

In terms of guitar work, riff composition and structure, the songs also seem to have improved in comparison to the previous album. Most of the songs from that one had pretty basic rhythm parts that were not that memorable. In "The Dreams Of Marquis De Sade" however, the guitar parts are so good to be true. The intro riff of "Take Care Of Me" and the power metal gem "Hard As Steel", the Fire Down Under Riot-era inspired riffs on "No Place To Go" and even some of the arpeggios on "Shadows" are prime examples of '6-string riffing done right'. There's also an extended addition of guitar harmonies, bringing the compositions all the closer to Iron Maiden.

Overall, Expect No Mercy's "The Dreams Of Marquis De Sade" is one of the few Metal Enterprises releases that shine out as being very very good, standing out as being almost flawless. I mean, yeah, there are some more mainstream-oriented songs such as "Lonely Days, Lonely Nights" which are not that great, but the performance of all the musicians is always on point and one can tell the spirit and passion that was emitted from all the musicians to produce this piece of music, even paying a nice tribute to the Rolling Stones with their more metallic arrangement of "Raining Black". "The Dreams Of Marquis De Sade" is nonetheless, SNM's strongest release and their last great showdown.