A COLLECTION OF WORLDS, PART I

Cult progressive rock band from Örebro,Sweden, featuring a young Dan Swano,known for his works in the heavy/death metal field,most notably with Edge of Sanity and Nightingale.Swano along with guitarist Anders Mareby were in the band Ghost from mid-80's,joined later by bassist Per Runesson.With the addition of singer Björn Eriksson and keyboardist Peter Edwinzon they became Icarus,but soon Eriksson left due to style disagreements.The quartet was renamed to Unicorn by 1987 and released a cassette in 1988 entitled ''A Collection of Worlds'' with Swano on vocals and drums.

It is hard to believe that this is a dedicated metal-head like Dan guiding this band,as the sound is pretty easy-going Progressive Rock,based on elaborate melodies and deep atmospheres.The overall style is pretty much in the vein of the early-80's British prog bands,mainly I find similarities with TWELFTH NIGHT and COMEDY OF ERRORS.Swano's voice is actually quite good for the style,which is based on some careful and dreamy keyboard themes,the strong guitar work with the fine soloing throughout and the easily accesible song structures.A couple of the pieces presented have a strong yet well-hidden GENESIS influence like the fabulous, almost symphonic ''Times Of Change'' or the romantic ''Mr K Just Left The Circus'',while a few others contain signs of Melodic Rock/AOR,''Fly eagle fly'' being one of them and also count in the excellent ballad ''Dreamland''.The memorable choruses and well-crafted arrangements indicate that these teenagers had some great talent to present.

Some nice work by Swano and his fellows on this rare demo release.''A Collection of Worlds'' is on par with the most of the Neo Prog characteristics and fans of the style will find this effort trully attractive.But I would even recommend this work to die-hard metallers in order to seek Dan Swano's music roots.