Dreaming Dead: Within One Review

At one time, having a female in a metal band was a novelty. Later on, this started to wear off but there were still not many females in extreme metal bands. It was this novelty that lead the Angela Gossow-lead Arch Enemy into a huge amount of success for such an extreme metal band. There have been more and more extreme metal bands with female singers an it appears that some of these bands have been accepted and praised more for the musical talents than the fact that there is a woman singing. Estuary is one of these bands and now, with their 2009 release on Ibex Moon Records, Dreaming Dead joins those ranks.

Dreaming Dead formed in 2006 under the name Manslaughter. They released an EP under that name and then later changed it along with adding a couple additional members. They released their first full length album early in 2009. The hype machine really has not discovered the band yet despite the presence of Elizabeth Schall, a beautiful woman, fronting the band. Thus far, they have garnered attention mostly on behalf of their versatile musicianship. This is a step in the right direction for the metal community.

The band’s influences are pulled from death metal, melodic death metal, thrash metal, and black metal. The music is quick-paced and intense. It owes more to thrash than the other forms although it is a little more bottom-heavy than thrash. The bass is audible adding to the thunder at the bottom of the music. The drumming is fast and loud. There are the occasional blastbeats and some other times where the drummer truly shines, but for the most part he stays in the background.

The guitar riffs bear some similarities to those of Dissection, occasional tremolo riffs swirling around the increasingly pounding drums. Other times, the riffs are more similar to death metal or even to thrash metal. The band switches styles effortlessly from one subgenre to another making them difficult to classify. Every once in awhile the band slows things down with a somber melodic interlude. This changes the pace a little bit and keeps the interest of the listener.

Elizabeth Schall does sound a little like Angela Gossow, but she has a little more rasp to her vocals, seemingly more influenced by black metal style vocals. It is often difficult to tell that this is a woman singing, she does a fine job.

All in all, this is a good debut album for this up and coming band. It will be interesting to see how the band follows it up.