2007-02-07
As always with musician projects with this much pedigree, it's to separate the amount of fame attached to the participating musicians from the quality of the music itself, however, I'll give it my best try.
This band is actually the brainchild of veteran bass player Mick Cervino (ex-
Yngwie Malmsteen, Ex-
Blackmore's Night). He's given a helping hand here by
Judas Priest's K.K Downing, who produced the album and plays on some of the tracks,
Bruce Dickinson's guitarist/producer Roy Z. handles engineering and also plays, and Malmsteen contributes some guitar leads. The basis for the band is Cervino himself, who plays most instruments and writes most of the tracks, with some strong performance by vocalist Matt Reardon, who has quite a strong melodic voice.
Musically the album is oldschool melodic metal, with strong roots in the 80's, yet it has quite a lot of variety going for it, mostly evident in such projects, where the music was probably written during quite a long stretch of time, being put together as an album for the first time here.
The album is off to a great start with the two opening tracks, quite fast and aggressive, with a slight neo-classical feel to them, slightly reminiscent of Malmsteen's music. There's no denying Cervino's prowess as a bassist, from the get start it's quite clear his playing is the…well, basis for the band's music. Guitar playing is as can be expected when such giants of metal are performing it.
One bone to pick I do have, a real drummer is used only in 3 tracks, and he is severally missed in the other ones, a drum machine cannot replace a real drummer, and though it doesn’t really hurt the music, it could've been much better if the guy had played throughout the album.
I liked the variation on the album as well, such tracks as "Deceiver", closer to typical oldschool hard rock than to modern metal, and the great "Alimentary Fable", which has a really good groovy thread in it, these showoff a different, and quite entertaining of this album.
The album ends with a Blackmore's Night track, "Storm", which serves as a solid end for the album, with plenty of atmosphere.
It's almost a flawless album, great melodic metal with a sharp aggressive edge, I would certainly suggest the use of full-time drummer next time, but apart from that there's very little to fault here, simply an enjoyable metal album, the way they used to make them, and sadly, rarely do anymore.
Alon Miasnikov
