Des Rocs – Dream Machine Review

Out of New York, USA comes multi-instrumentalist DANIEL ROCCO, and Dream Machine is the 3rd album he releases under the moniker DES ROCS. He sings, plays bass, guitar and drums, while on this new album he also gets help from bassist ERIC MENDELSOHN, drummer WILL TULLY and ALAN JOHANNES on guitar and mandolin. The result is a very interesting affair that during the beginning sounds like MUSE meets QUEEN, but throughout the album there is much more to discover. Classic Rock is the overall label you could attach to this album, and I have to say that I am going to closely follow DES ROCS in the future.

 

Anyway, opener and titletrack Dream Machine starts quite modern, but still has a big massive retro Arena Rocking chorus that combines the best elements of MUSE and classic QUEEN, while similarities to ROYAL THUNDER are also quite clear. The groovy hard rocking I Am The Lightning follows quite nicely in a sorta similar direction, yet this one rocks really hard, and actually the album continues in the same way at first sight, which means combining big fat groovy guitar riffs with a modern high-pitched vocal driven MUSE/QUEENish chorus that sounds at it’s best during songs like Nowhere Kid and the aforementioned tracks. As the album develops, there are also a few calmer moments and less MUSEish orientated pieces, such as the pure 70s classic rocker Never Ending Moment that sounds like a mixture between BOSTON, RUSH and BTO, and how about the classic BRYAN ADAMS meets ZZ TOP ish rocker Bad Blood! Natural Born Thriller is clearly THE BLACK KEYS ish heavy retro blues rock orientated, while In The Night is showing even more diversity, because this is a superb Power Rockballad that sounds dangerously close to the perfect baby of LED ZEPPELIN and KINGDOM COME.

 

Concluded, the mixture of all the popular different rockstyles of the past 50 years on just 1 album is something that DES ROCS does very well, and this new album Dream Machine is therefore highly recommended!

 

 

Written by: Gabor Kleinbloesem

Ratings: Gabor   8/10