The new hopes of Spanish metal open their debut with a promising intro. The overture shows their high capacity to write classically oriented music and wakes up my interest for the forthcoming musical experience.

'Dreamland' brings in Nacho Ruiz, their singer. His style of singing is trying to copy my all-time favourite singer Andre Matos (Angra, Shaman), which isn't a bad thing at all. Of course his voice is still many light years from Andre's, but at least he has something to aim at. Everybody familiar with Angra or Shaman know that it isn't always easy to get into a singing technique like that. So it took me a few times to listen to the CD to get used to Nacho's singing, but after that he isn't so bad. But again, why on earth does he scream at the end of the lines? While trying to sound like an opera singer, he starts to sound a bit (or two... ) ridiculous. Only about ten years of practice and maybe we'll have a new singing genius in the metal world.

With their debut it's easy to notice that this band really has set their goals high. Besides Nacho's pursue to sing like a god, they have a second vocalist to sing female voices and two keyboard players to play live without samples. The female voice Mamen Castaño also has a great singing potential (in the beginning of 'Eternally') and I'd be very pleased to hear her sing more in the future recordings.

Also their songwriting is very ambitious, mixing together power, melodies and some progressive elements. These hard-to-handle influences give the listener a bit tangled picture of what they're trying to do. Obviously Arwen wants to be more than they can at the moment, but this leaves me wondering what will we get in the future from them.

What they surely need in future to do great things with music is practice. To do great things with sales, they surely need to change their cover artist. Of course it's a kind of good point that the weakest point of the record is its cover, but this cover is pathetic. Women without clothes doesn't really belong to a self-respecting band's cover, or what? The whole coverart seems very amateurish and isn't worth this band's ability to create music.

Soundwise the production isn't bad, but some more power would be very welcome to really give the last kick to the listener's butt. Maybe next time.

This is one of the most promising debut albums on power metal genre in years. Competition is hard, even in the metal genre, but Arwen clearly has the capacity and will to create high-quality metal music and not just be a poor man's Angra / Shaman (Brazilian one).

Reviewed by Mikki
10/05/2002 20:13