Progressive Savage

The Never Ending Illusion by Daedalus

The Never Ending Illusion is an Italian prog-metal band’s Daedalus second studio album. The band was formed in April 2000 in Genoa and released their first–though I haven’t got the chance to hear it–studio album Leading Far from a Mistake in 2003. Judging from the songs credits, at least for this album, the band’s mastermind is their bassists :) Fabio Grem. To tell you the truth, I didn’t like this CD at first and it took me some time to begin to like this recording. Sadly, this happens more often lately.

The main problem with The Never Ending Illusion is that apart from couple of good songs and songs fragments the album contains a handful of mediocre compositions. Songs good enough in light of what’s being shipped by musical industry lately but rather mediocre for a progressive band. Plus Davide Merletto’s voice which is, well, something I’ve got used to expect from an Italian band but not necessarily something that’s pleasant for my ear. Davide’s vocals revolve around his higher voice registers and given that occasionally he sings in a James LaBrie manner but not at the same pitch, makes the final effect horrible. Furthermore some of his pieces lacks the energy and proper emotions that one–that is me–would expect given the lyrics and instrumental background (“The Dancers”).

The Dream Theater influences are also visible on the instrumental level, for example the main guitar riff in “Hopeless” or the second part of “Life” featuring calm vocal line (I admit, Davide performs well here) on top of slow drums and synth passage followed by Andrea Torretta’s guitar picking up the melody where Davide left it. This is in turn one of those great moments of this CD that made me change my mind about this album. The same goes for–again–the second part of “Cold Embrace” introducing slow french horn solo (Stefano Lodo) followed by eerie guitar and Lucia La Rosa’s voice duo later on, quite in the mood of Cryptic Vision’s “Angel’s Requiem”. There is also one completely wonderful track on this album, title song “The Never Ending Illusion”. This is the longest and most diverse song of the album introducing baroque-like passage giving the song frivolous but very amiable feeling. The song begins in heavy metal style, moves to a slow down featuring great voice and keyboard duo, goes through jazz-like riff and back to solid rock.

Unfortunately, the instrumental “Horizons in a Box” is a bit of a disappointment. It’s not as much exciting as I would have expected from an instrumental track. The most irritating song of the album is–and I’m sorry to say that–“Mare di Stelle” (Sea of Stars), which suddenly stops just after it begun to spin up leaving only drums and horrible vocal laments.

To sum it up, I’d say that The Never Ending Illusion is an album rather for collectors or fans only. It have couple of interesting moments but the mediocrity of the remaining songs overwhelms and leaves pretty lousy impression. So sad.

Country: Italy
Released: February 2009
Website: www.progdaedalus.it
Line-up: Davide Merletto (vocals), Andrea Torretta (guitars), Fabio Gremo (bass), Giuseppe Spanò (keyboards), Davide La Rosa (drums)
Guests: Roberto Tiranti (vocals), Alessandro Corvaglia (vocals), Lucia La Rosa (vocals), Stefano Lodo (French horn), Stella Sorgente (double bass)
Track list:

1. Waiting for the Dawn 1:14
2. Perfect Smile 6:24
3. Life 5:46
4. Hopeless 5:11
5. Cold Embrace 5:24
6. The Never Ending Illusion 9:06
7. The Dancers 5:06
8. Horizons in a Box 7:11
9. A Journey to Myself 6:32
10. Mare di Stelle 5:27