A Review of the Melodic Death Metal Album "Perceptions" by Mexican Melodic Death Metal Band Buried Dreams

Heavy metal from Mexico does indeed exist. But most of us wouldn’t even think of the country of Mexico when it comes to heavy metal. Mexican melodic death metal band Buried Dreams came out with their excellent work Perceptions in the year 2000. And the album is an absolute beauty and gem in spite of the vocals having a distinct accent. So who are the people that play on this fine album?

• Eric Olguin: all death metal vocal growls
• Antonio De Yta: guitars and backing vocals
• Ndua Valdespino: guitars
• Ezquiel Mendoza: bass guitars
• Ivan Santos: keyboards and vocals
• Oscar Doniz: drums

As the album begins, we are treated to a beautifully classically influenced short instrumental called "Illnamiqui." That’s a very strange name for an instrumental but it must have some kind of Indian origin to it. I am referring to Indian in this case as being Native American. I guess they took a page out of German band Helloween’s playbook and decided to start the album with an instrumental song. Those of us that appreciate fine music won’t complain about this.

"The Riddle" starts off with melodic guitar work and the drums are clearly present in the songs providing a good match. It is as if everything “gels” so well. The song is about someone that has been attacked by a creature most likely a vampire. Those of us that have read Bram Stoker’s famous novel know that vampires need blood in order to live. Judas Priest covered a similar topic like this in their song Nightcrawler on the Painkiller album. Buried Dreams has often been compared to the bands In Flames and Dark Tranquillity. To say that these guys are an exact copy of those two mentioned bands is, well, a bit inaccurate. Buried Dreams does not have as many instrumental songs and they don’t really have as many time changes, especially on this album. The band performs a cover of the Carcass song of the same name, thus suggesting that they may have been influenced by these British grindcore metal legends.

"The Mind’s Subconscious" makes reference to that fact that sometimes our thoughts can become our enemy and deceive us. The great spiritual teachers will say that overthinking is not healthy for the mind. Sometimes if we want to do something, we should just take action and just do it without second guessing ourselves. Hence, that’s why you will be exposed to this album review and commentary. This review is also being done to inform others that heavy metal in fact does exist in Central America as well. At the End has a melodic interlude that would leave bands like Iron Maiden impressed. Eric Olguin has that “Mexican” accent when he growls but I would say he’s still pretty good for a death metal vocalist. "Cosmic Prophecies" is basically about this cosmic kind of energy that will come to the world to answer all of life’s biggest questions. This ray of light will tell us why things are the way that they are in this world. The album’s lyrical themes tend to focus on the philosophical nature of life and are complex to interpret.

"360" is perhaps the favorite song of mine on the album. It has a terrific melody that goes along with the drumming after the song opens up being at a level of medium fast. "Gods of Fire" is the longest song in the album clocking in at over 10 minutes long. The song begins with keyboard orchestration and the sound of rainfall along with some spoken parts.

Overall, Perceptions is a quality melodic death metal release with drumming that fits well with the songs. However in the opinion of this writer, these guys are not as good as Shadow or Serpent. Nonetheless, the job that Buried Dreams did on this album should be given lots of praise and credit! If we had to give it a score from the 100 point scale, the album gets no less than 90 points.