Christian Metal Fellowship: Dream Quest - Centralia Review (1/30/08)

Alright, so many of you may not be familiar with the band known as Dream Quest, they are a three piece Power Metal (with punkish vocals) act from Winnipeg, Canada. If you are not familiar with them, and like acts such as Sonata Arctica, Man-o-war, and old Van Halen then i suggest that you head on over to their myspace page and give them a listen. Now one of the first things that may catch your attention is their little catchline "Power Metal minus keyboards and dragons", it gave me a little chuckle when i read it.

The band has two releases, titled: The Release (2004) which features nine tracks coming in at 45:01, and then their latest effort Centralia (2006) which has five tracks clocking at 33:05. Now Centralia is a concept album, but is different than most. Each track tells a story, and the story differs everytime you listen in a different order, because it changes the plot. In all it can come out 120 different ways!

The first track on the CD is titled, Forgiv'r, it is about four and a half minutes, and is a great way to open up the CD (though technically any song on it could open it up). "You think I don't know there's a spike in my eye?
It fell from a hole in the sky" having that as an opening line to the song, you can tell its going to be a fun song to listen to, afterall they are a fun band.

Second off the song The Fuse That Burned Too Fast comes in, and this was actually the first song i had ever heard from the band. The guitars are something that really stick out in this song, and in my opinion i think they are quite remarkable. The lyrics to this song are basically about having a short temper, it may sound cheesy but it is pretty awesome, and something a lot of us need to work on fixing. The song is about six and a half minutes and is completley jam packed with great guitars, sweet lyrics, and even some high pitched 80s metal vocals! which are a suprise but very well done.

Third is the almost eleven minute track titled Magnified, this one happens to be my favorite because it musically goes in a lot of directions. The song starts off slower than all the rest, and vocals come in about two minutes into it. At first it may seem boring but then once it hits five minutes it goes into an instrumental piece which just ranges in a lot of different places. Especially at 6:59 when they throw in a little "Loung, jazz, blues rock"-(Vandor) influence. You totally dont expect it but it is cool, and is added in very well. Then it starts to lead up and at eight and a half minutes the vocals come back in and all instruments cease, for about 30 seconds. At 9:07 back again with the 80s metal vocals! at 9:11 he goes even higherand he holds it for about eleven seconds. Then at 9:28 he just breaks out and its now madness, but amazing it is. Then the song goes wild, and then finally comes to a close.

As far as the other two songs go though, you will have to wait and see for yourself how they are. =P

Overall i think the CD deserves an 90 out of 100. It was very good, and i have listened to it a significant amount of times, but it really needed some more songs. I will be looking forward to the next release from these guys, and encourage them to keep up the really good work. Hopefully they will add some more of those 80s metal vocals to their next release .