After the release of a demo and an EP, Shape is the full length debut album by Dynamic Lights. After reading the info leaflet where this Italian band compares itself with bands like Wolverine, Pain Of Salvation and Fates Warning I felt quite some excitement in playing the album for the first time. It didn’t take more than the first couple of minutes of the opening track “In The Hands Of A Siren” to make up my mind about this band: excellent! I just love the melodic and gentile piano play melting the ingenious compositions into catchy progressive rock songs. The guest appearance of vocalist Jamina Jansson in “In The Hands Of A Siren” is a nice effort, combining perfectly with the slightly roughened and sometimes little over the top vocals of Matteo Infante who has no problem in hiding his native tongue.

Where the opening track immediately catches on, most of the other tracks on the album take a bit more time getting into. The contradiction between the melodic, ‘simple’ piano play and the complex compositions and the powerful drumming is something that is quite different from the usual progressive rock/metal. It’s not hard to hear that of the above mentioned bands, Pain Of Salvation is the main source of inspiration for these Italians. I’m certain that Shape is an album that will keep on growing on me with every time I give it a spin. I can hardly wait to see this band play the Dutch Progpower festival in October of this year…