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C O L U M N S
Featured Demo
Neverland - Neverland By: Frank Hill
Published: Wednesday, October 1, 2003
"Neverland stands for: energy filled metal with much melody. The story of NEVERLAND began in autumn 1999 at the music school ACM, Academy of Contemporary Music at Zurich. There Boris Stoll and Daniel Huber decided to establish a new Band. They wanted to integrate their musical ideas in compositions, which everyone who listens to melodious vocals, progressive parts combined with classical riffs will like very much. After a long time with difficulties in completing the Band, they found with Manuel Wagner (key), Andreas Mislin (guit) and Roland Jost (bass) the appropriate musicians until early 2003 Mike Zotter (voc) completed today's line up of NEVERLAND." --Neverland Pretty good summary of the extremely impressive demo from these six guys from Switzerland.If I had to, I'd call them a power-prog band with a sound that is highly talented power metal or prog with catchy choruses and less musical indulgences. From the opening number "Neverland" to the last, "Mysteria", the songs on the four song set are pretty consistently played with power chord leads and melodic scale runs between the verses. Their musical education is appearent in not only the skill of each member but also the fine production and arrangements that were done by themselves. Mike Zotter's vocals are clean and with only a slight accent. I didn't have any issues with his abilities overall, but they are in a somewhat safe range and I would have liked to see what kind of stretch his vocals are capable of. All of the guys are music school trained and it shows. Each song is about 4 1/2 to 5 minutes long and nothing here is menacing or overly uplifting. None of it is overly triumphant or glorious, but it is well-crafted positive-styled metal that could easily find a market in the power-prog scene. One of the most well-made demos we've recieved. Fans of bands like Dream Theater, Symphony X, Royal Hunt and Sonata Artica should check this band out. [Other Maximum Metal Columns]
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