DRACULA OPERA ROCK

Are you italian? Do you speak italian or understand it? If the answers is no, then you can appreciate this album. Otherwise, you will find it very hard to tolerate it. I say so because I am italian, therefore I am unluckily able to understand the lyrics of this record. The concept is based on Dracula - Great!, you say. That's what I said when I checked the album out, I *love* Dracula. But it's not about just Dracula's legend, or Bram Stoker's novel. It is based on Coppola's film. The songs follow the same order and logic of the movie, and this is the first reason why it sounds so lame, deja-vu, false. A story about a story about a story. This lack of originality is made worse by the very bad lyric-writing: banal, trite, like poems written by a teenager. Stupid verses, commonplace of the lowest kind: a whole childish approach to the theme (beware, he comes to drink your blood! is the typical line) which makes the story stupid and lame. And that's a great pity, because from a musical point of view the album is very good. Not very orignal indeed, but sure a great prog-rock album: perfectly played and composed, fast, thick, carpets of keyboards running on a warm pulse of drums, tasty solos, good melodies. I thought: this is the album that Dream Theater are trying to write since a long time. Technique always kept under control, the taste always put before the virtuosism. Semplicity. And a power rock album. The Ouverture is just splendid, a summa of the best symphonic prog rock of every time. Ho mangiato gli uccelli (I ate birds) reminds the most bizarre melodies of Pain Of Salvation. I didn't listen to the complete Opera yet, but the theatrical implant of the whole work can be heard, and it's very powerful, ready to have a great success in theatres. But alas, the lyrics are the worst example of italian romantic cliches, and they completely ruin a very good act of music by a master band.