Jacob's Dream

Jacob's Dream

Metal Blade Records, 2000

http://jacobsdreamusa.wixsite.com

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 01/27/2000

There are times that modern-day heavy metal confuses me.

Back when I was a teenager, it was easy to know in which genre a specific group could be classified. Slayer was thrash metal, Venom was death metal, Bon Jovi was... well, we won't get into that here.

Nowadays, a group can cross over into so many different styles in the course of one album that you almost need a road map to understand just where you are. This is the case with the self-titled release from Jacob's Dream. At times, they sound like what Queensryche used to be like; other times, they have the menacing leer of a death metal band. Still other times, I could easily pencil them in as a progressive metal band. It gets a bit confusing - and in the end, that hurts this album.

It's not that the band - vocalist David Taylor, guitarist/keyboardist John Berry, guitarist Gary Holtzman, bassist James Evans and drummer Rick May - are bad by any stretch of the imagination. The group has their chops down well, and Taylor reminds me a lot of both a young Geoff Tate and Helloween's Andi Deris. Musically, Jacob's Dream could hold their own with many bands in the progressive genre, with their intricate keyboard and guitar work that is hauntingly beautiful and powerful.my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

But the band runs into two problems early on. One problem is that their lyrics are so complicated that you need to be reading the CD booklet in order to follow what's going on in the song. I admire the way that Jacob's Dream tries to put things into a neat little package, but trying to get through a song like "Funambulism" is like trying to speed-read War And Peace. I'd rather of had the band stretch out the song a bit to allow for natural lyrical development.

The second problem is that Jacob's Dream sometimes doesn't know what kind of a band they want to be. On one hand, they are a group with an amazing power of social commentary, as heard on "Scape Goat": "Don't you know / That you have the power / Entrusted with your children's lives / Let them know / That there are no scape goats / Teach them well / To know wrong from right". On the othr hand, they try to turn towards the darker side of metal with songs like "Mad House Of Cain": "From the wine press that sets / On the alter [sic] of grim / Come the vats of red liquid / All filled to the brim".

The difficulty is that Jacob's Dream seems to want to be sinister in their lyrics but pleasantly progressive in their songwriting. There's enough to suggest that this is definitely not a band whose CD you'd find at your local church - their criticism of the church on "Crusade" is rough, mainly because it's historically accurate. But it's kind of hard to believe that the music could be embracing the dark side when it often refuses to play the part in the more upbeat songwriting. I'm not saying it's not possible; it's just not believable.

Jacob's Dream is a band that is still very young, and they need to scope out where they want their place to be in the world of heavy metal. Until then, Jacob's Dream is a decent enough album that suggests as much confusion in their direction as security in their musicianship.

Rating: B-

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© 2000 Christopher Thelen and The Daily Vault. All rights reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of Metal Blade Records, and is used for informational purposes only.