Having recently seen them live at the European ProgPower festival, I was interested to hear the new album from Into Eternity. Their heavy repetoire made quite an impression on me and their second album ‘Dead Or Dreaming’ is just what I expected it to be; furious metal with using both clean and death/grunt vocals.

The three lead singers and the harmonies are really good especially when they sing together, while the solo performances are equally as good. They all play an instrument as well, although there are now only 4 players in the band, instead of 5 which was the case with the first record. Missing member is the keyboardplayer. This explains the abscence of one on ‘Dead Or Dreaming’. It’s not a bad thing, it’s still used in a minor way, it makes the songs sound even heavier. New member by the way is guitarist Daniel Nargang.

This record doesn’t fall into one category, but if I was forced to chose one it would be progressive death metal. The wide variety of heavy/death metal songs using progressive/melodic structures can’t really be placed anywhere. Not that the songs sound the same, but in that perspective you can compare them with for instance Meshuggah since that’s also an agressive band using many technical song structures.

The opening track ‘Absolution Of The Soul’ starts highly agressive and it sounds like a death metal song. Then the clean vocals come in and it sounds like melodic metal. All of a sudden the vocals changes to death metal vocals, making the music heavier again. These changes are present on the entire album. I’m not really a death metal fan, but the many thoughtful changes make this interesting to listen to. The mix between the genres seems to have been found perfectly.

You won’t find any slow songs on this record. ‘Selling God’ has some soundeffects at first and you might think you have found some peace and quiet. Until the music kicks in after just a couple of seconds, forming it into a very dark and heavy death metal song with some nice guitar solo’s.

The closing song of the album is called ‘Identify’. What a way to end an album. An awesome guitar solo in the middle section and insane riffs everywhere. Into Eternity can attract fans of both death metal and progressive metal. Expect to hear very heavy songs with technical moments and good melodies. Very interesting!