So you like a nice blast of heavy melodic rock? You like said melodic rock to have those tasty twinges of prog rock chiming through right? Well maybe we have something in front of us here that's really going to appeal to you then.
French rockers Eden Sands have put together a collection of songs which draw influence from all over the spectrum, interestingly enough quoting both Edguy and Symphony X as some of the bands main influences, although myself, I can't really hear anything of Symphony X here apart from the defacto "well it's kinda proggy metally" type of comparison.
'Living Kills' is an interesting listen, if simply only for the strange bubbling variety of sounds which the band have used to construct it. It's very melodic rock... but then it's got little Dream Theater esque sequences as shown on the albums second track 'Golden Fangs Hungry Dogs', moments when musically you actually have to take a step back and go, no wait this isn't Dream Theater!
That said, my one problem with this album, and it's only a minor problem really, is that vocalist Stefan Tudela's voice annoys the hell out of me. I've been trying to put my finger on it, and it's hard, but simply put it's like his voice is out of synch with everything a lot of the time, and at an annoying pitch. It's not like it throughout the entire album - Scream being a prime example of where it sounds great - but the previously mentioned 'Golden Fangs...' just leaves me grabbing the side of my head as though someone was dragging their nails down a black board.
Strange but true, but I'm sure that other people are not going to have the same reaction to it as that.
Overall this is a remarkably solid debut, and certainly a band that is going to appeal to both the prog and melodic rock crowds, even if they do try and straddle the boundaries a little too well.