Ivory Gates - The Devil’s Dance

Ivory Gates are hailing from Brazil… a country where some very crucial metal bands, like Sepultura, Angra, Shaman, Viper & Mindflow and so on, have come from over the last 3 decades. The band’s name was, probably, taken from Fates Warning’s song “The Ivory Gate of Dreams”… so, as you can imagine, the guys are playing progressive metal that’s rather influenced by Fates Warning (their vocalist seems to be a big John Arch fan) and Dream Theater. The band was formed in 2000 and since now it has released three albums (“Shapes of Memory” in 2002 & “Status Quo” in 2005) including this one.

 

I know it’s pretty difficult to survive or to separate yourself from this specific metal genre… and most of the prog bands… are mostly copying the big names of the scene. Appreciatively, Ivory Gates do have some nice ideas… they play fairly well… and they wanna deliver their musical perspective to the genre.

 

“The Devil’s Dance” is an OK prog metal album that is “betrayed” by the weak and not so clear production. Although, the album was recorded at Soulmix Studios (Renato Napty is responsible for the drums recording) & Transient Studio (the guitarist, Matheus Armelin, recorded the other instruments, the voices, also mixed & produced it) and was mastered by the engineer Brendan Duffey at Norcal Studios… the sound is the weakest point of this work. It’s not bad… but it does not help the final effort in any case. They’ve got some nice ideas and if they work better on the production, they can present a more proper work in the future.