Band:	Nu.Clear.Dawn
Album:	Poem Of A Knight
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	July 2003

01. Overture
02. The Meeting
03. Falcon And Crow
04. Revolution
05. Horses Of Steel
06. Wounded
07. Memories On The Road
08. Rebirth

Middle East countries are nowadays full of good metal bands but the first country that comes to mind is not Syria. Well, Nu.Clear.Dawn is a progressive metal band hailing from this country with their debut album entitled "Poem Of A Knight" and they deserve your full attention.

As the title suggests, this album has epic power metal melodies but if you look at the length of the songs, well, they definitely make you understand that their music will be something like a mix between Rhapsody and Dream Theater. Well, the truth is not far from it! Keys and drums are basically similar to two bands. The first one is Symphony X, the second is Dream Theater. That's to say that these guys start at the top level of progressive! Meanwhile, Shant Hagopian on guitars apparently takes pleasure in alternating between John Petrucci's style and Luca Turilli's, and it rocks!

Another important element of Nu.Clear.Dawn trademark is the very specific voice of its singer. A way to picture it would be to imagine something even softer than Andre Matos [former singer of Angra] but with sometimes a theatrical aspect that enhanced the epic keyboard lines. Having a good singer is important and this band has one in Amr Rifai.

"Poem Of A Knight" is a good album, with a very well designed artwork, good lyrics but on top of all that the music is really interesting. From the beautiful intro to the climax of "Rebirth" [the best song on this album], the band plays with talent and with heart. In my opinion, the highlights are 'Rebirth' [8 minutes of progressive beauty], 'Falcon And Crow' with its dark progressive atmosphere [kind of Evergrey] and the ballad 'Wounded', in which Amr Rifai shines on vocals.

Now the two big drawbacks of this album are: first, the production could have been better [drums and vocals should be more exposed, keyboards less important], second, while the keys are great, they sometimes take too much place such as in the first half of 'Revolution'.

Despite of its title, 'Poem Of A Knight' is far from being the usual stereotype of power metal. Instead, Nu.Clear.Dawn plays a very nice progressive metal, inspired, sometimes with happy melodies, sometimes with dark atmospheres, but the result is great and the originality of their music should be sufficient to check them out for any metal fan. These guys have talent and I hope a promising future and major labels such as Limb Music Production could sign Nu.Clear.Dawn without shame.