DREAMCASTERS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA is in no way what I expected. Rather than typical Symphonic Metal that blends orchestra with Metal and perfectly balances the two, this feels much more like it is leaning towards the orchestral side. This is evident in the fact that this is a Christmas album, with most of the pieces being covers of classic Christmas carols, albeit in very different arrangements.

Dan, Paul, Andre, and Tom, are all well accomplished composers outside of DREAMCASTERS, with each of them doing work with other bands such as CIRCLE II CIRCLE and with Paul even composing entrance themes in professional wrestling. These men are in no way inexperienced and they do show a certain amount of skill here, especially in the songs actually written by them.

The problem is, that this really isn't anything special. Sure the arrangements are different to what we have heard before, but they really aren't that much of a leap. Adding a bit of grunt to tracks like "Kings" - which is the name given to their cover of "We Three Kings" - does not suddenly make it a completely new and fresh piece. This seems to be the case throughout this entire album, and it's really quite disappointing from what could have been an incredibly solid group if they had actually decided to do something original. There's a reason we only listen to Christmas music at one point in the year, and that's because it's all extremely limited and very flat on emotion and feeling. If we truly enjoyed this music, it would be something we listened to all year round, instead of the one holiday. This is where DREAMCASTERS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA went wrong. People will listen to their (free) album only once, and then completely forget it ever existed. Which is probably a good thing.

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