Dream Evil - Children Of The Night

*=Staff's pick	Children Of The Night* Dragonheart Betrayed Evilized (Unplugged version)* + Children of the Night videoclip

Genre	Heavy Metal	Niklas Isfeldt	Vocals
Tracks	4	Gus G.	Guitar
Runningtime	17 Min.	Fredrik Nordström	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Peter Stålfors	Bass
Release	20 Oct. 2003	Snowy Shaw	Drums
Country	Sweden	Fredrik Nordström	Keyboards
Similar artists	Hammerfall

Two full length albums within barely a just a year, successful tours with bands like Blind Guardian, Masterplan and Kamelot to name a few, nominated to the title "Newcomer of the Year" in many metal magazines are factors that absolutely speak for themselves and describe the immediate and indisputable success of the first years in the Dream Evil episode. It's no use denying that their melodic heavy/power metal has had a huge impact on the metal scene and gained them a crowd of world wide fans. When it comes to new releases the band seems to have the motto to serve an album per year and the band doesn't seem to evade from that one this time either. According to the promo sheet a new Dream Evil album should be expected before the summer (2004) and meanwhile they're releasing the MCD Children of the Night.

This one doesn't contain any material from that upcoming release though, but besides Children of the Night also two bonus tracks from the Japanese versions of both Dragonslayer and Evilized, an acoustic version of the title tune of the latter and finally also a video clip of Children of the Night from a gig in Gothenburg in February 2003. All in all, a little something for the fans and obviously also material the band's wanted to release for quite some time.

The MCD begins with Children of the Night that I guess won't need any further explanation since it's also on the Evilized album. The following two songs, Dragonheart (from Dragonslayer) and Betrayed (from Evilized), are the Japanese material just mentioned but I think it's quite obvious why these only got as far as bonus tracks. Dragonheart's the fastest tune on this MCD with a pretty catchy beginning and refrain, but the verse and the overall impression doesn't exactly manage to produce any goosebumps. The verse section feels pretty flat and although the unmistakable Dream Evil sound is clearly traceable it ends with that. Betrayed is more of a mid tempo tune but this one feels even weaker than the previous Dragonheart and escapes my memory very quickly. Then the album ends with the highlight of it all- Evlized unplugged. It's not as good as the original, but this ballad version is still very solemn and emotional and would be a real crowd pleaser if played live. The video clip of Children of the Night is a nice touch in itself and filmed very professionally but once again the goosebumps are conspicuous by their absence.

This MCD is of course a decent gift to the fans but I don't think it's much more than that. The only real benefit I got out of it was Evilized unplugged and that a great track like Children of the Night got an album of its own. I wouldn't recommend you to spend any cash on this release unless Dream Evil are among your absolute favourites and instead await the upcoming full length album sometime during the first half of 2004. This is of course a very optional statement but also one that in this case feels a bit more valid than usual.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	8	6,5

Summary
6,5 chalices of 10 - Mat