Formed in 1999 by guitarist Daniele Mazzanti, Dream Steel spent several years creating their style through diverse musical influences, numerous live performances, releasing and a couple line-up changes. With the release of three demos over the last three years Dream Steel are ready to unleash their mixture of Power Metal and Progressive rock combined with some Symphonic elements and a touch of Gothic atmosphere, with their latest and full length debut, You.

The CD gets underway, after a short instrumental intro, with The Flight Of A Butterfly, also given as a radio edit at the end of the CD, which is musically triumphant combining both power and progressive elements with beauty and grace, reminiscent of Kamelot and Angra. Sadly it is blemished with vocalist Alex Antonelli’s worse performance on the CD. Alex is a very good singer, almost too good at times, and shines throughout the album but he just does not “wow” me on this first track.

After another short intro, Behind…, the title track, You, benefits from some rich and heavy riffs before flowing into an up-tempo love song that is very reminiscent of what Labyrinth was doing a few years ago, though not as fast. The rest of the songs on the album are all very well produced and elegantly performed.

Over all Dream Steel has been successful at creating a high-quality balance of power and progressive metal. The entire album is very squeaky clean, a little too clean for my tastes, CD and will greatly please fans of older Labyrinth, Kamelot, Angra and maybe even those of Evergrey. I look forward to seeing how Dream Steel further development with their future endeavors. This is definitely a band to keep an eye on.

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