The story of Dreamtone & Iris Mavraki's Neverland, Neverland in short, is a strange one, full of coincidences. Back in 2004, Turkish prog-power metal band Dreamtone released a demo called "Unforeseen Reflections". At the time, since it was their very first step into the professional world, Dreamtone members decided to send demo CDs all around the world, to whatever magazines, websites, radios they can reach (and they reached LOTS OF places!). One of these contacts was a guy from Greece, named Orpheus. But more importantly, his mother was into finding a Turkish metal band for collaborative acts. Her name was Iris Mavraki.
After bazillions of e-mails and phone calls, Dreamtone and Iris decided on to work together for a series of concerts. The main idea was to present a Greek - Turkish collaborative project, both showing the classical music and metal's intersection, but more importantly, carrying the flag of peace as natives of two ever arguing nations.
Again, after another bunch of e-mails and phone calls, they decided on to carry this project to a more stationed, established presence and decided on to enter the studio. In 2006, they renamed this project as Dreamtone & Iris Mavraki's Neverland.
First fruit of Neverland was an album named "Reversing Time", being recorded in 2007, also featuring a symphony orchestra near to metal's highly praised artists. Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian), Tom Englund (Evergrey), Gary Wehrkamp and Mike Baker (Shadow Gallery) appeared as guests on Reversing Time, adding a different flavour to the album's atmosphere. At the end of 2007, this atmosphere got acknowledged by AFM Records, one of metal's leading names, and Neverland became a part of AFM Records family.
Reversing Time turned out to be a success. It was released on February 29th, 2008 and almost all of the reviews praised the album. This reaction from the media and fans of the project encouraged Neverland people to turn it into a full time band rather than a project. Therefore, Dreamtone and Iris Mavraki merged under one band name, Neverland, and started working on their second album.
in 2009, Neverland started the recordings of their second album, named "Ophidia". Having guest names on the first album received positive reactions and therefore, Neverland decided to make this a tradition, inviting guest names to their albums. Jon Oliva, aka: The Mountain King (Savatage, Trans Siberian Orchestra, JoP), Edu Falaschi (Angra, Almah), Urban Breed (Bloodbound, Pyramaze, ex.Tad Morose) kindly accepted the invitations of Neverland and became a part of Ophidia.
Ophidia is released by AFM Records once again and hitting the shelves on 26th of March, 2010.
