Band:	DGM
Album:	Different Shapes
Style:	Progressive power metal
Release date:	June 2007

01. New Life
02. The Alliance
03. Some Day, One Day
04. Unkept Promises
05. The Fallen Angel
06. Peace Of Mind
07. Frontiers
08. Signs Of Time
09. Close To You
10. A Man I'll Never Be

Time for another first listen review. This time the choice was on purpose; since we had Momentum coming out not long ago, it got me somewhat interested in DGM. Further, it turned out Simone Mularoni is the lead guitarist here, just like in my favourite italian metal band Empyrios.

Let's just jump to my feelings towards Different Shapes: I generally like the style DGM (and Mr Mularoni) represents, it's halfway cheesy - half serious pure metal riffing (the same that the above mentioned group is special about), so I had higher expectations from the beginning. We got various ideas presented on the instruments even if the core concept of the music is the same; interesting solos, lounge fills between verses (those kind of remind me of Dream Theater); but nothing really astonishing; however the vocals are just plain weak for me. From time to time the singer guy just seems to lose his energy in his voice, makes it flat. I can't help it, this is true for Momentum as well.

As I mentioned they put up lots of different things on the album: we got aggressiveness on the verge of death and power metal ("Peace Of Mind"), almost entirely boring ("The Fallen Angel") opposing quite cool ballads ("Frontiers"), power-up songs ("Close To You" or "New Life"), and even genuine prog-power songs ("Signs Of Time"). You can see that most songs I mentioned are from the second half of Different Shapes, I enjoyed those a lot more.

Checking out the lyrics, I'm not able to always see how a track's title actually connects to what the songs is about; I guess that does not matter that much when you're just chilling.

I don't think I've managed to catch all the "shapes" this disc holds on the first spin; but I'll definitely give it another try.