'Moon Reverie' is the project of guitarist 'Luca Poma' who is well known and renowned in the world of metal and hard rock for having collaborated with artists like 'Uli Jon Roth' or 'Vinnie Moore' or 'Kee Marcello' (see chronicle here). He therefore released a first album under the name of his project and embarked for the occasion the singer ‘Luca Pozzi’, the keyboard player ‘Nicola Leonesio’ and the drummer ‘Manuel Togni’. The style of the Italian is neo-classical hard rock with multiple influences ranging from power metal to symphonic metal through melodic metal.
These are 12 tracks for over an hour of music available to us and after the short instrumental introduction where we already feel a nice fusion between the keyboards of 'Nicola Leonesio' and the guitar of 'Luca Poma', 'Forgiveness' starts strong with an energetic title in a power metal style dear to the Italians which offers us a first melodic refrain at desired, then, 'I Will Come For You' is a more hard-rock composition which brings us back to the 70s/80s with the keyboards which play an important role and which can make think of formations like 'Deep Purple' or 'Rainbow', and 'Say Forever' changes again register for a much more melodic rock title close to AOR style. After his first 3 tracks quite different from each other, 'Eyes' continues in an energetic hard-rock of the 80s with a remarkable performance on the song of 'Luca Pozzi' who has a powerful voice rather acute which goes perfectly with this genre of composition, then 'In My Heart' is the ballad that any melodic hard-rock group would have liked to compose and 'The Raven' comes back to power metal with a fast tempo and an unleashed guitar solo from 'Luca Poma'. We then find the 'First And Last' which, after the flamenco introduction to the classical guitar, brings us back to powerful and melodic hard-rock from the 80s, then 'On the Edge' continues in this register and we can’t keep from making a parallel with 'Rainbow' especially since the guitar solo of 'Luca Poma' is very close to what 'Ritchie Blackmore' could do at the time. With the ballad 'Far Above', we go back to the 70s with a nice mix between 'Deep Purple' and 'Led Zeppelin' and 'End of Times' is also in this vein with a folk side and melodic lines that could claim, this time, the new 'Ritchie Blackmore' with his companion 'Candice Night' (see here). And then there is this last instrumental track 'Moon Rêverie Suite' which is tailor-made for those nostalgic for keyboards/guitar battles which were one of the hard rock specialties of the 70s with groups like 'Deep Purple' and who puts forward 'Luca Poma' and 'Nicola Leonesio' in a superb melodic title and catchy with classic sounds mixing very beautiful acoustic and electric parts.
In summary, this magnificent album of 'Luca Poma' brings us back with a modern sound a few decades back to the time of the big hard-rock groups with very talented artists and 'Moon Reverie' is to be recommended to all those and those who like to mix metal and melodic hard-rock... | |
