Since their name change from Iron Angel, Jacobs Dream has seen two different eras. The first featured the high pitched style of David Taylor, the band releasing two albums, Jacobs Dream (2000) and Theater Of War (2001). The second was with the release of their third album in 2005, Drama Of The Ages, with vocalist Chaz Bond (ex-Biogenesis) and also sings on their most recent and independent release, Dominion Of Darkness.

With its classic US power metal approach, Dominion Of Darkness picks up where Drama Of The Ages left off, creating a heavy guitar oriented sound while still showing the desire to structure songs with some solid and catchy choruses. Chaz effectively provides his deep emotive vocal style while having the range to add some moments reminiscent of Geoff Tate. Guitarists John Berry and Jon Noble make a solid team providing some of the heaviest riffs in the bands career, best demonstrated on tracks Demon World and Mercy Killing.

Dominion Of Darkness offers a good enough variety of tracks, from the faster pounding, Demon World and Can’t Break, to slower more epic tracks, Embraced By Sorrow and Don’t Talk. Can’t Break is a straightforward rocker which opens with a modern, thrash-like riff which resonates throughout the song, which also offers one of the catchier sing along choruses on the album. Embraced By Sorrow is a slow yet pounding epic, probably Chaz’s best performance on the album.

There are a couple of issues that I had with the Dominion Of Darkness. Even though the instruments are all well performed, the production of the album is quite muddy. It does not take away from the songs individually but it defiantly becomes almost overwhelming after listening to a few tracks. I did have a difficult time staying focused on the album when listening from beginning to end. Besides the production, this is due to the songs being very long, all but one song is almost five and a half minutes long, and that the album itself is thirteen songs long. Even though Jacobs Dream have touched on religion some on their previous albums but it seems to dominate the subject matter of the individual tracks, but does not at all come across as preachy.

For me, Jacobs Dream has been sitting on that cusp of something quite extraordinary given the quality of the musicianship and song writing skills. Unfortunately they just missed, once again, with Dominion Of Darkness, but I do hope they keep trying. If all the pieces properly fall into place for Jacobs Dream they do have the potential of creating one of the greatest metal albums of all time.

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