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10/10 Matt Guillory, keyboards; Matthew Bradley, vocals; Patrick Reyes, guitar; Steve Reyes, bass; Jeremy Colson, drums
Seldom does a progressive metal band leap to the fore with such a confident debut album as Dali's Dilemma,
especially one from the climes of northern California (San Jose to be
exact) where the band has honed to perfection their debut record, Manifesto For Futurism.
Records of this razor-sharp bite and rapid brilliance are usually
crafted in Germany or Sweden, it seems, but Dali's Dilemma manages to
capture the essence of Yngwie Malmsteen, Rainbow, and Deep Purple,
swirling it all together with progressive metal flourishes.
The band is built around a solid songwriting ethic. The two brothers,
guitarist Patrick and bassist Steve Reyes, met keyboardist Matt
Guillory in '94, soon adding vocalist Matt Bradley and drummer Jeremy
Colson to create the synergy that is this astonishingly capable prog
metal maelstrom. Guillory is the band's resident rock veteran, having
appeared on approximately 10 records for various artists, as well as
Magna Carta's Rush tribute, the Pink Floyd tribute and the recent Magna Carta collaborative piece The Age Of Impact from The Explorers Club.
The band's strange name came about rather rapidly (as does everything
with this band). Matt's uncle suggested 'Dali's Dilemma' just as the
boys had to abandon, for legal reasons, their former moniker. "We
needed a name really fast because Magna Carta wanted to start doing
promotion," Matt recalls with a laugh. "To us, Salvador Dali was an
excellent painter, a surrealist, always very experimental,
unconstrained by boundaries, which ties into the type of music we're
playing. We try to create without limits and come across as really
expressive. The 'Dilemma' part refers more to the challenge of doing
something this experimental and becoming commercially accepted. I'm
sure Dali was quite appreciated but it seems he had more of a cult
following, just like progressive rock and its offshoots within metal."
But for all the band's amazing musicianship, there is a discernible and
distinguished hard rock current flowing beneath the mayhem. This is
entirely intentional, and when pressed for influences, Matt cites the
classics: old Metallica, old Rush and Pantera. On the lighter side, U2
is cited for their spiritualism and trademark sound, which can be heard
on stirring ballad 'Hills Of Memory', a track underscored by a
particularly Bono-esque vocal from Matt Bradley, who elsewhere evokes
the passion and magnificence of a Jeff Scott Soto or a Glenn Hughes.
But make no mistake, this one's jammed full of riffs and
Yngwie-inspired axe acrobatics, as evidenced by the large and looming
first and last tracks on the album, entitled 'Within A Stare' and
'Living In Fear' respectively. Matt agrees: "I guess if you had to
describe our music it would be very technical, very ambient; it runs
the gamut. There's a wide range of styles which we all enjoy, but these
two songs really hit home what we're all about: the heaviness, the
progressive influence and the emotion."
Lyrically, Dali's Dilemma is also strong and versatile. In fact, Steve,
Matt and Jeremy contributed solo-credited lyrics, and Patrick turned in
a collaboration with Jeremy. Songs are derived from very personal
sources and are not only rendered oblique enough that they can often
relate directly to experiences we all have in common, but also to
intense, otherworldly or fantasy realms. A rare occasion where that
platitudinous "they're open to whatever interpretation someone wants to
put on it" actually applies. "It's all very personal but we try to make
it poetic," Matt offers with a dismissive wave of the hand.
The final touch to this well-appointed package is the Zappa-esque, and
more accurately, Dali-esque artwork of graphics legend Dave McKean.
Matt explains: "Dave's really well- known, and we all really like his
work, so we asked him if he'd be interested in doing ours and he said
yes. The cover image is a statue of a head with a kind of Salvador Dali
mustache on it, with these weird arms coming out the eye sockets; very
surreal and something that Dali might do. It just completes the whole
concept."
All told, Manifesto For Futurism just might be the liveliest, hookiest, most rhythmically daunting pageant of prog metal since Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime, Dream Theater's Images And Words, or more recently, Shadow Gallery's Tyranny.
All deserve a place in the pantheon of higher musical learning of a
most metallic nature. And as we mentioned, this is a first record by
the newly minted first name in California-bred progressive metal...
Scary.
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