Dream Company
The Wildest Season

The Wildest Season is the most important moment in the history of Dream Company; that is how the press sheet for this album begins and why not? For the Italian band that started out as a Bon Jovi tribute band it is a big change from playing covers on stage to recording albums. They have done over 600 concerts over Europe, the question is how much they will be booked for concerts now that they will perform their own songs. But what about those songs? Should they have stuck to making covers or do they write songs that are great to listen to and feel relevant these days? Well, that isn’t a completely straightforward question to answer, because like so many other things in this world you cannot see it in black or white but rather in shades of grey.

Musically it is melodic rock/hardrock with catchy choruses, some ballads, and some midtempo songs – the usual selection of songs for an album in the genre. The Bon Jovi influences are there but not as obvious as you might think. They don’t really offer anything we haven’t heard before but at least they don’t fall into the busiest mainstream path, it is good that they don’t over polish the production. Perhaps the mastering by the great Alessandro Del Vecchio is helpful here, it is edgy but still with strong melodies and really good vocals. There are no surprises in the variation of songs and you are getting pretty much what is expected and the playing time is kept sensible which is a good thing.

The Wildest Season is a good album and Dream Company shows that they are capable of writing strong songs of their own and they are not just copy-pasting what others have done before. The songs with pace and energy are the strongest; the slower songs tend to feel a bit tame and sleepy. However, cutting those slow tracks away would be detrimental to the whole as the dynamics of the album would suffer, so they need to up their game in that department because when it comes to catchy songs with hit potential they seem to know how to do it. Now, I am not saying that those slower tracks are weak but they are not standout tracks and will not help the album stand out from the massive amounts of albums released in the genre every year and that is something that is needed to elevate an album like this to the highest levels.

The best tracks are the trio fro track seven to nine, The Ghost, Land of Freedom and Love is Possession – those are excellent tracks and I can even overlook with the accent in the last of those tracks. The opening track Days in Blue also deserves a mention as it sets a good tone for the album and it is difficult to beat an opening track that is as good as that. So there is a fair bit to like about Dream Company’s first album and it could be interpreted as showing even more promise for the future, it is an album that should work quite well for most music fans and you should really have a closer look at it if you enjoy the melodic side of the hardrock genre.

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