Band:	Dreaming Dead
Album:	Midnightmares
Style:	Death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	April 20, 2012
A review by:	Doc G.

01. Wake
02. Midnightmares
03. Overlord
04. Corpse Mtn
05. In Memoriam
06. Lapse
07. Into The Abyss
08. Exile
09. Departure

Progressive melodic death? Well, this will probably sure make a lot of people out there very happy.

God only knows why.

Progressive melodic death metal is a pretty broad term, right? I mean, what kind of influences, or curve balls does this album throw at you? The answer is none. Don't bother looking for them. Midnightmares is utterly dry-cut and generic. Maybe this whole thing would be interesting if acoustic passages were something new to metal...but it isn't. Melodic riffing you've heard before tossed in between an annoying amount of predictably unpredictable tempo shifts.

...And a vocalist who is trying to sound like Chuck Schuldiner...very poorly, mind you. There is plenty of Death worship going on here, but the vocals are most prominent. Those gravelly falsetto type Schuldiner vocals sung with a really, really thin delivery seem to dominate this album.

Dreaming Dead does have talent, though, which is why somebody out there will undoubtedly worship this sleeping pill. Extremely tight technical abilities paired up with clean, accessible, catchy leads topped off with obvious influence from a universally respected band? Seems like a bad mix for unnecessary praise.

Maybe Dreaming Dead are capable of pulling off something that isn't entirely boring and predictable. This band is only on their 2nd album with Midnightmares, and it is a nice display in performance abilities, regardless of the lack of creativity. Aside from the vocalist, Dreaming Dead is another band of decent musicians deciding to play songs written half-assed. Perhaps this is a band to revisit on a future release?