DC Cooper - DC Cooper



1. Dream (3:52) 2. Easy Living (2:35) 3. Until the End (5:32) 4. The Angel Comes (4:40) 5. Within Yourself (3:40) 6. Three Generations (4:26) 7. Chained (1:31) 8. Freedom (6:18) 9. Take Me In (3:49) 10. Forgive Me (3:39) 11. Whisper (4:11) 12. The Union (8:57)

Total Running Time: 53:10



After four extensive and productive years with the band Royal Hunt, D.C. Cooper convinced himself that it was time to take another step to challenge his musical boundaries; this time on his own. He decided that he needed to express all those buried musical ideas and streams of creativity that didn't fit his band through an ambitious solo, self-titled album. Soon, he found himself gathering up a team of virtuoso musicians from some very respectable bands (Vanden Plas, Pink Cream 69 and Conception) and entering the recording studio with only one thing in mind, the music. He made all the right decisions.

Quite honestly, my first impression of DC's record was "Oh great, another vocalist gone solo artist…woohoo!!," (Yep, that previous line was drenched with sarcasm) but after I took my first listen, my negative perspective was shattered to pieces as I experienced a complete turn-around in my shallow preconception. DC Cooper is an album full of great compositions, excellent arrangements and powerful hooks, effective in keeping the listener interested from song to song. If I didn't know better, I could state that this album was an effort from a well-established band that had easily been together for at least half a decade, or at least achieved a decent trajectory in the music business. Needless to say, these guys quickly found ways to compliment each other and create that cohesiveness and good chemistry characteristic of a solid band, centering their main effort and focus on creating an intense sound for the album, letting each song breathe as an individual entity as well.

Ok, so let's get to the music. DC Cooper is a melodic-progressive metal record, strongly reminiscent of bands like Symphony X, Stratovarius and Helloween, consisting of a one-directional focus in quality, in every sense of the word. Songs like the great-hook-line oriented track "Dream" and the strongly-dynamic "Until The End" are proof of the band's capabilities, based on great riffs, excellent vocal melodies and an undeniable impact created by their well-polished sound. They manage to paste these powerful qualities in every track, resulting in not one distasteful song on the entire album.

Prog/Melodic metal has got to be one of the most heavily saturated genres on the entire musical landscape, with uncountable wannabes that only attempt to clone (in a poor, disgraceful way) great bands like the ones previously mentioned. Consequently, it's a real task to even know how to get around the scene, let alone find a worthy artist in the whole mess. Well, here's the good news: one has to look no further than this album if one is searching for a great record in the genre. The reason is simple, these guys know their business.

-by Javier Elizondo

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