4th Dimension
Dispelling the Veil of Illusions
Power Prog Records
2014
4th Dimension is an Italian band whose musical style belongs to the symphonic power metal. To their credit they have so far a released a debut album entitled “The White Path to Rebirth”, in 2011 and this year they do return with their sophomore effort “Dispelling the Veil of Illusions” which consists of 10 compositions.
Having as main influences Rhapsody of Fire, Angra, Sonata Arctica, Blind Guardian (especially on the vocals) and Stratovarius and using some scattered prog elements they are performing compositions which have their own identity, without trying to imitate these bands, but they also are engaged in intense use of keyboards, which I find somewhat redundant because I’ve always associated them strongly with other musical categories. The tempos tend to be fast (something not unusual in the power metal genre) in most songs and what’s noticeably absent is guitar solos. Instead there are a lot of keyboard ones.
“Dispelling the Veil of Illusions” musically didn’t make any special impression to me. It belongs to past decades and back then some bands existed that used to offer much more substantial offerings in the genre. With the passage of time this whole genre has been saturated by a plethora of substandard or mediocre releases. Unfortunately, 4th Dimension falls in that category. Listening to this album was quite tiresome, even if the compositions were not that long and the vocals seemed to be rather moderately skilled. On the plus side, the album has an excellent production where everything sounds very polished and bright and a beautiful artistic cover with some purple hues that tend to make you want to be a little less strict, overall. But they still need to work, pretty hard to progress.
Having as main influences Rhapsody of Fire, Angra, Sonata Arctica, Blind Guardian (especially on the vocals) and Stratovarius and using some scattered prog elements they are performing compositions which have their own identity, without trying to imitate these bands, but they also are engaged in intense use of keyboards, which I find somewhat redundant because I’ve always associated them strongly with other musical categories. The tempos tend to be fast (something not unusual in the power metal genre) in most songs and what’s noticeably absent is guitar solos. Instead there are a lot of keyboard ones.
“Dispelling the Veil of Illusions” musically didn’t make any special impression to me. It belongs to past decades and back then some bands existed that used to offer much more substantial offerings in the genre. With the passage of time this whole genre has been saturated by a plethora of substandard or mediocre releases. Unfortunately, 4th Dimension falls in that category. Listening to this album was quite tiresome, even if the compositions were not that long and the vocals seemed to be rather moderately skilled. On the plus side, the album has an excellent production where everything sounds very polished and bright and a beautiful artistic cover with some purple hues that tend to make you want to be a little less strict, overall. But they still need to work, pretty hard to progress.