Thank god. After having lost much faith in good old heavy metal from having reviewed Iron Maiden’s latest, the fires are re-kindled with Dream Evil’s United.

Make no mistake, Dream Evil are the disputable kings of unabashed metal cheese. We’re talking about mega-anthems written about and for the glory of metal music.

But Dream Evil have got some elements about them that can make their songs damn hard not to like, and United is without a doubt the least resistible album this Swedish outfit has done yet. Number one is a singer that any melodic metal band would give their eyeteeth for, Niklas Isfeldt, who’s never sounded so stirring and powerful. The man’s voice is amazing, and the production brings him out the best when he’s needed the most: during the choruses.

Those are elements numbers 2 and 3. Dream Evil benefits having Fredrik Nordstrom more as a world-class producer than they do a competent rhythm guitarist. It’s better this way, trust us. Element three is the absolutely massive, dare we say patriotic, choruses, and what anthemic metal band would be worth its salt without that?

Sure, Dream Evil has always been able to write a catchy song... sometimes for worse than for better. The band’s previous album, The Book of Heavy Metal, had its share of hook-laden songs, but there was a definite unevenness in quality and originality — some of the songs’ elements felt a little too borrowed. Not on United. This is Dream Evil’s most uniformly solid and original work.

How enjoyable is the album? Put it this way: As soon as we finished listening to it, we immediately played it again. That’s saying a tremendous amount for having thousands of CDs and running a zine. And while we will admit that the album might be a little too single-mindedly catchy and anthemic for us to listen to it over and over and over again in a short period (at the risk of us becoming so sick of the choruses stuck in our heads), we know we’ll be coming back to the album again. If you're a heavy metal fan, so will you. (8.5/10)