Italian progressive metallers Daedalus released their second album in association with several striking names. "The Never Ending Illusion" was mixed by Roland Grapow (Masterplan, Helloween), the cover was drawn by Mark Wilkinson (Marillion, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden) and it features several guest appearances among which is Labyrinth fame singer Roberto Tiranti. Their new album comes to ripe some of the classic progressive metal fruit, but only 10-15 years late. According to the label info Daedalus are influenced by bands such as Queen/ Dream Theater/ Iron Maiden/ Rush/ Arena. Forget about it. This is plain and simple first to mid era Dream Theater worship. And it's not even good.

Thinking about it twice, not even good is kind of a harsh thing to say about such an album. Executively this album lacks nothing and it 's a pure professional work. As already noted, Daedalus are Dream Theater all the way. They sound like all those DT induced projects such as Dali's Dilemma, Mullmuzzler, Explorers Club and so on without the vision of artists like Matt Guillory and Trent Gardner. I didn't have the chance to listen to their first album (nor would I pursue it) but these guys seem to be utterly trapped in their mid 90s progressive metal love and devotion, and I don't even dare to imagine how strong this would be in their earlier work. Plus this album serves a trend born, flourished and diminished within the 90s so I don't know what is the point of releasing mid 90s prog metal in 2009. Ok, these guys probably feel like playing DT metal but this cannot make me cut them any slack for being totally boring and uninspired.

One more disturbing fact is that this album's not even that technical for the name of god! Wankery is out of the question and although this may seem to be an advantage, some people actually enjoy arid technical show off. I know I would at least be astonished if they played one million notes per second instead of such a watered down progressive metal essay. Daedalus try so much to sound emotional when in fact they have absolutely no edge to their music. The vocals for example are soooo boring, copying James LaBrie for the millionth time (who I consider to be a simply good singer and nothing more). Pure boredom.
I was unable to find a good standout song, but "Mare di stele" (Sea of stars in Italian) is by far the most boring, useless, pop disguised "cover" I've heard in quite a while. Tiziano Ferro would be proud of such a song. Would an Italian metal band be proud of me quoting the name Tiziano Ferro in a review of their album? No more, please.