Battlerage - Dreams in Darkness

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The Chilean Metal scene is strongly influenced by Old School Metal bands, especially from names of the 80’s. Of course it’s not a mortal scene, but a large number of Chilean bands still insist to be clones of names that we already know. It’s not giving continuity of a band that has stopped, because you’re not them. But from time to time we can hear some pretty good releases from the country, as “Dreams of Darkness”, the fourth full length from Santiago based quartet BATTLERAGE.

They’re a Heavy/Power Metal band heavily influenced by German Metal scene, from names as ACCEPT, GRAVE DIGGER and RUNNING WILD, but they prefer to do things on their own way, what brings us something that isn’t new at all the formula was used many times on the past), but it’s truly personal, full of energy and charming melodies. So we can say that the band has a lot of to offer.

The “sin” of the band rests on the sound quality. I say “sin” because it’s crude to a point that is beyond the needed, not enough to turn their music into a sound mass that we can’t understand, but it seems like an artificial try to emulate what was done in the past (but I must say that the instrumental tunes are really good). No, they can do better than what we hear on it, and maybe on next time, a better producer can give them a help on this matter.

Musically, we can say that they are a talented band, able to create excellent melodies and songs. The energetic impact of “Victim of a Liar Heart” (very good song, with charming guitars), the slow approach of “Immortal Sin” (very good vocals, indeed, and the song bears a good chorus as well) and of “Placer Infernal” (here, bass guitar and drums are doing a heavy and good work), the Hard ‘n’ Heavy clear influence that fills “Hide from Yourself”, and the German Metal scent presented on the instrumental “Intellectual Dreams” and on the bitter guitars of “Prisons of Fire” are proofs that they are truly good.

These are excellent songs with a regular sound production, but “Dreams in Darkness” can satisfy the fans without problems, and BATTLERAGE is really a great name from Chile Metal scene as well.

Originality: 8
Songwriting: 10
Memorability: 8
Production: 6