Dreams in Fragments
When Echoes Fade

I did review the debut of the Swiss band Dreams in Fragments a few years ago, and I wasn’t very impressed. Now they come again, and the nightmares are gone from the title When Echoes Fade, but you still find them among the dozen tracks that make up this new offering. This new album has a more dramatic artwork, it was quite nice on the debut album as well, but this one is better. So, what about the album? Is it better than the debut?

It is pretty similar to the debut in terms of style and everything, female fronted with operatic and symphonic touches. There are some male vocals with growls and things like that, the production is strong and pretty modern. The creative aspects are less impressive, they are quite similar to many other bands within the same genre. It is an album that offers exactly no surprises, and it is pretty long with a playing time over fifty-three minutes, that is probably a dozen minutes too much. They could safely have done away with a few tracks to make the album more dynamic and direct; it feels like it never ends.

When Echoes Fade is better than its predecessor, the songs are a small step forwards and the album has a more mature and confident sound. Those are positive aspects to this new album, but there are still aspects that are less impressive. The lack of fresh ideas can still be a bit negative when listening to this album, and it doesn’t stack up overly favourable compared with the best in the female fronted metal genre, they are probably around average when comparing with other bands in the genre. It still feels like they are too cautious and don’t really dare to be exciting, and when you are just copying what others have made you will be compared with them and never measure up to a band that was creative and broke new ground.

The album may be good, but it is one of those that just make up the number and its echoes will fade very soon, and I say that before the album is even released. You may not go too wrong with a good album like this, but there are just so many choices that dwarfs this one. So it is a fairly pointless album, I actually turned to watch a documentary series about the Pyramids rather than keep listening to the album while writing this review. They need to make more interesting songs if they want to make anything more than good albums that are soon forgotten, I think I have reviewed at least a few dozen albums in the same genre that are way better than this one – that kind of explains the problem with this album.

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