VESSEL OF LIGHT - Vessel Of Light
There are heroes of your youth that you encounter again and again, more often by chance than not. One of them is Dan Lorenza, a fifty-five year old rock musicians whom I first got to know in 1997 with his band Hades and their album Resisting Success. This progressive metal band was beloved in the underground but never really became popular with the mainstream. A little later he founded the somewhat straighter Non-Fiction, but once again success didn’t come. As Dan Lorenzo is a passionate musician, he never gave up, and in 2007 released a single album – Room Full Of Sinners – with Overkill’s Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth on vocals. After this one-off, he’s now – ten years later – back with a new project called Vessel Of Light.
This duo consists of Dan Lorenzo on guitar and bass, and Nathan Opposition of Ancient VVisdom (not to be confused with Swedish black metal band Ancient Wisdom) on drums and vocals. After Hades, Dan Lorenzo veered into straighter rock music territory with an emphasis on low end sounds. Vessel Of Light’s self-titled debut EP comes with five songs and a gloomy intro with a certain Western flair. The first regular song Dead Flesh And Bone is rather sedate with a low tuned guitar and deep vocals that remind a little of Nineties desert rock and grunge. Even when things get a little heavier, as on Descent Into Death with some screamed vocals, Vessel Of Light never lose their calm. They just go on playing uncomplicated rock music that feels tremendously timeless.
The EP leaves a very solid impression. Right now Vessel Of Light are only a duo, but they work on becoming a quartet to allow them to play live shows. Once the line-up is complete, it only leaves the problem of the two founding members living about 700 kilometres apart from each other.