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Rating:
I don't understand.
An album like this is never what I would expect from the musicians featured on this record. Besides the "boss" Derek Sherinian, an extravagant keyboard virtuoso, we find as a guest on only one track his former colleague John Petrucci, and the faithful Zakk Wylde and Yngwie Malmsteen.
One would expect an album worthy of the artists, yet we are faced with a banal album, with a few small ingenious touches, but which remains suspended between these few ideas and the chasm of boredom. Let's start with the guests: Petrucci, guest on the opener "Czar of Steel" performs his merely technical duty, but Derek should have used him much better.
By now we know how dear Dreamer has lost himself in the increasingly crazy technology of his amplifier cabinets and in his continual display of his ultra-picking. The keyboard-guitar duel until the end of the track is out of place. The track starts well, the usual keyboard riff (quite banal, to tell the truth) but gets lost in predictable offbeats and keyboardist and guitarist solos that leave you bewildered by their fragmentation having a disjointed appearance.
Petrucci exits the scene, and Zakk Wylde enters the game: in "Man with no name" his voice is really annoying under a wall of quite predictable rock riffs, returning later to the usual cliché of the keyboard-guitar duel. Who plays more notes, who hits the sharpest ones... "Phantom shuffle" instead refreshes my ears, offering me an excellent keyboard-sax piece with Brandon Fields. Original, truly beautiful as a track and unexpected from Derek. But with the next track, it hits rock bottom: "been here before" is an incredible rip-off of the much-hated beloved "Anna lee" from Dream Theater’s 'Falling Into Infinity'. Scandalous and I move on.
The title track continues in absolute banality: predictable rhythmic solutions and very underdeveloped melodies. But to make it even worse, the Swedish master Malmsteen comes in. Asking him to write a solo that isn't in harmonic minor is too much. The usual bendings, the usual vibratos, the usual notes. "On the moon" instead presents another positive moment on the album: again an excellent job on the sax, a great, relaxing piece, and an excellent use of the piano by Derek, while an exceptional guitar solo carries us to the end of the track.
"The Moonson" retraces the heavier tracks of Sherinian, noting the usual performance by Yngwie. Derek seems unwilling to evolve, always using the same sounds, the same effects which over time become annoying. "Prelude to battle" and "Viking Massacre" seem to me to be lifted straight from a Malmsteen album. Not so much for the theme but precisely for how it's structured. No innovation, but the track just stays there. An unnecessary "In the summertime" closes the album with Billy Idol on vocals.
An album not even sufficient, mediocre. Always the same story, little innovation, little evolution, little inventiveness. From such highly-demanded and praised musicians, I would expect much, much more. The best parts? Those right where they calm down and remember that sometimes it takes little to make great music.
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