Customer Reviews

Dreams You Dread

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first heard this album I hated it. The songs are mostly slow grinding heavy and not extremely fast like the older albums Subconscious Terror and Transcend the Rubicon. However,The Dreams you Dread kind of grows on you after several listens. The first track "Down on Whores(leave them all for dead)" begins with an awesome dark clean guitar intro then the heavy mid paced death riffs begin. Standout songs are "Down on Whores", "Where Flies are Born" "Path of the Serpent" and "Negative Growth", in Negative Growth, thre is a killer break in the middle where the music stops and the drummer hits the cymbals and cues the guitars to come in with a cool sounding semi-technical riff.

Benediction know how to write good Black Sabbath/Celtic Frost inspired Deathmetal with plenty of slow heavy riffs. Overall, this is not near as good as their first 3 albums, but this album does have some good moments and is worth checking out.

I think the problem with this release is it's constantly being compared to the releases Benediction did prior to it. I also clicked the 5 stars, although I would actually say 4.5 rather than a true 5. No this isn't Subconscious Terror or Transcend the Rubicon but it's more than worthy of standing on it's own and being a solid Benediction release. I just see more references to S.T. or T.T.R. than about Dreams You Dread in the other reviews, which doesn't seem to give it a fair voice. It's good to see a band expand and grow musically, therefore making different sounding albums. So far, only AC/DC can use the same exact music but change the lyrics and have a consistent string of releases. Otherwise, when bands just recycle the same old riffs and the same style from their prior albums, their music can get stale and old. I mean who really wants to listen to the same things over and over? Sometimes you want heavy music rather than speed to get your adrenaline flowing.

If you like heavy, grinding, riff laden metal, then you'll like this album. There isn't a single bad song here, Dave Ingram pounds out deathly gutteral vocals while Darren Brookes and Peter Rew lay the guitars on thick. Frank Healy has some killer bass parts throughout the album rather than being hidden underneath and drummer Neil Hutton is vastly underrated in my opinion. Why these guys aren't more well known or given more notoriety, I don't know because they're musically more talented than many.

Stand out songs are Down on Whores (Leave Them All For Dead), Where Flies are Born, Negative Growth, and Path of the Serpent. Overall, nearly 46 minutes of crunching music you would play and bang your head to.

"Transcend the Rubicon" was the undisputed best Benediction release by the time this album came out. "Dreams" starts out with the mega slow "Down on Whores" (which features a really cool bass line in the beginning.) The second track "Certified" brings in some of the more "Rubicon" flavor with its mid-tempo speed and variation and also clocking in at under 3 minutes. Ingram's voice is in a little bit higher range than previous albums but still sounds good. There are some good guitar riffs here and there ("Griefgiver" and "Negative Growth" for example), but often the bad riffs continue on in a loop or are played for far too long. The bass stands out a little bit more in this album than previous offerings (with the possible exception of "Grand Leveller" which had its standout bass moments.) The drumming is quite a bit different from other Benediction releases in that the drums do some pretty strange and often cool things (check out parts on "Soulstream" and "Where Flies Are Born").



The biggest problem with "Dreams You Dread" is the album doesn't have much consistency. There are some decent songs, I don't think there is one bad song, but there are no standout songs either. The album flows together too well and isn't like "Transcend the Rubicon" in terms of kicking it from beginning to end. Luckily with the next release "Grind Bastard" they'd make up for all these flaws. Decent but not essential album.

This is a disappointment. It's not Benediction's worst album. It's quite good album but if you want Benediction's best album purchase TRANSCEND THE RUBICON CD from 93. It is brutal and heavy. An essential slab of mayhem!