I had this album on tape for so long that I completely forgot about it until I saw it was going to be repressed by New Renaissance, and I have been FAST to get my hands this, eh. I don't know exactly which label it was pressed on for the first time, as far as I know it could have been New Renaissance itself or even a self produced product, all I had was a home dubbed tape I got by tape trading. This time I can't help you with many details, sorry! I never ever seen this album cover until I got this Cd. But believe me I used to play it to nausea, oh yes, I did... This is a gigantic recording of embryonic Death Metal, recorded in 1987 and comparable in heaviness and intensity to the likes of Death and Possessed. Now Dream Death's sound has sponged heavy influences from the grim, atonal sound of Celtic Frost and Hellhammer, but I won't go so far as calling them Doom or even proto-Doom as I read elsewhere. There are no real sludgy parts in here and even Black Sabbath have made heavier, crunchier passages years before, so don't be swayed by what you might have read. This however doesn't meant that his album does not rule just becose it does not have incredible accelerations or lead-heavy bridges, becouse - fuck - it does! The vocals have a sound which bands today seems to be unable to produce, it's very close to Messiah or demo-era Morbid Angel ("Abominations of Desolation" might be a good comparison), very clear but with just that inch of roughness to make it sound "evil". This is Death Metal in the very earliest sense of the word. This music has the magic touch, the sparkle of insanity that made earlier Metal bands go one step further in extremity so that the journalists and fans could shape the term Death Metal after shit like this. The music is mostly mid to mid-fast with a constant droning sound so it lacks the brutal barbarity of Possessed (hey who doesn't after all?) but there is this hypnotic vortex of ancestral forces that just drags you down into the sound. It's like a tapestry being waved riff by riff song after song... slowly and inexorably. This is a BIG reccomendation for historians of the Death Metal phenomenon eh. The cover artwork doesn't really reflect the lyrical content: it shows what looks like an humuncolous in a wizard laboratory (but hey, I love 80's metal albums covers, even those of shit albums like England's Samurai or Executioner), while most of the lyrics are more social with a desperate, passive attitude, save for some exceptions. The guitarists of this band went off to form the mildly-average-to-bad band Penance after disbanding Dream Death, so this is their only product, but PsycheDOOMElic has just released a collection of their demos on Cd, and guess what? I'm going do buy them right away! This Cd is hand numbered and limited so I think it's wise to hurry up!

 

Tracks (8): 1 - Back From The Dead 2 - The Elder Race 3 - Bitterness And Hatred 4 - Black Edifice 5 - Divine In Agony 6 - Hear My Screams 7 - Sealed In Blood 8 - Dream Death