CoC : Moontower - Moontower : Review

Moontower - _Moontower_
(Black Mark, 1999)
by: Adrian Bromley (8.5 out of 10)

I'm really starting to wonder if Dan Swano will ever run out of ideas. This guy is a fountain of metal music creativity. From his lengthy work with Edge of Sanity onto other projects like Nightingale, Pan-Thy-Monium, Unicorn, Odyssey and Diabolical Masquerade (the list could go on forever), Swano has always been one step ahead of everyone else, for the most part. His music also delivers the goods, and then some. It's a real stunning characteristic that few musicians have in this metal industry. His work is built on ideas, expanded within the studio and etched into masterpiece format once it gets recorded. One of his newest projects (besides Odyssey, released on Canuck label Utopian Vision Music) is Moontower, and are we blessed with more unbelievable work or what? From opener "Sun of Night" onto "Add Reality" and "Encounterparts", we see and hear Swano masterfully weave his ideas into keyboard oriented progressive death metal. In sort of Rush-styled keyboard work, Swano truly goes the whole nine yards here, making Moontower stand out as some of his best work in years. While many fans of EoS might not like the excessive use of keyboards here, I recommend giving this a spin, as it really flushes a unique sound/style into a sometimes repetitive music genre (that being progressive metal). Moontower is just another highlight in Swano's impressive career.

(article published 14/3/1999)