Frontiers [Release date 09.10.20]
Tenth album from Italian Prog Metallers, DGM. In which they examine the notion that the journey (of life) is more important than the destination.
With all of the tracks, there’s a direct correlation between the events the song represents and the controlled musical cacophany. The song titles offer a clue… ‘Stranded’, ‘Silence’, ‘Curtain’ (big clue there) and so on.
The breathless opener, ‘Flesh And Blood’, slows up only for a superbly uplifting chorus. The relentlessly pounding rhythms,and the screaming guitar, which move from speed freak to searing, melodic soloing, represents the pain of birth and arrival in the world.
Lyrically, ‘Surrender’ progresses to the child/parent relationship, and makes a subtle, but definitive move into hard rock, as does the excellent ‘Fate’, one of the album’s outstandingly good tracks, trading the aggressive vocals and guitars for some beautifully melodic moments. In fact, stylistically, much of the album switches fluidly between genres.
‘Hope’ is perhaps the prime example, starting life as exhausting, mouth open, piledriving power metal. Then jumping ship, sailing a course through the hard rock territory of class bands like Gotthard and Mad Max, occasionally negotiating eruptions of sonic turbulence. It’s an exhilarating journey, and never pushes too far into “epic” territory, thanks goodness, that approach would have undermined the album’s theme.
As has been widely reported, the title track’s singing, soughing violin and crashing chords are ready made for a Kansas comparison. Which is understandable but unfair. This song stands on its own. Marco Basile’s vocals connect directly with the song’s lyrics of love, loss and regret, transcending all possible genre limitations. He raises an already powerful piece, musically, into album standout position, by a distance.
Considering this is not the band who started life as DGM ten albums ago, this is where any decent band would have wanted to end up. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024
In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections
Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)
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