EIDOLON - "NIGHTMARE WORLD" (METAL BLADE)
Eidolon is a Canadian band recently signed to Metal Blade featuring the talents of, among others, Glen Drover on guitars (currently also in King Diamond) and Shawn Drover on drums (ex-Infernal Majesty). "Nightmare World" is their 3rd album.
Like so many bands, what we have here is a couple of sound musicians. Most notably Glen Drover shows why he was asked to do King Diamond's "Voodoo" tour. Throughout the album he plays the guitar well. The songs as a whole are good, too. But it's the singer that holds the band back. Brian Soulard, well, he reminds me of another singer but I can't put a finger on a band name or anything. He's not bad - far from it - but he simply doesn't excell.
"Nightmare World" contains a collection of really good tracks, of which "Nightmare World", "Eye of Illusion" (despite vocals not quite cutting the high bits) and "Dreamscape" in particular are the finest. Only "Majestic Interlude" (a totally superfluous acoustic ditty that it quite out of place on the album) is bad, and "Noctem Aeternus (Eternal Night)" is rather average. Other than that, "Nightmare World" is a fine album.
RK
Written June 2000