Reviews

Formed in Germany in 1998, the band was just another face in the metalcore flood when they started out. The genre was on the rise, picking up more and more listeners, and the Germans asked themselves why they shouldn't give it a go too,…

This metal collective from Kranj has been around since 1994, but between assorted troubles and constant lineup changes, they never quite managed to really get going. The road to better times began in 2000, when the persistent

Wheels Of Fire is Cream's third album, and in many ways their last. Split into two parts, the first recorded in the studio and the second live in San Francisco, it shows the band in a different light than we were used to

The cult Welsh band that delighted us across most of its albums with a unique knack for making music that was punchy, complex and innovative all at once, as well as a whole string of cheeky and

"Rise", as the title of the debut has it, can certainly bring a bit of an uplift, which is perfectly natural in modern, multimedia-soaked, sterile societies that no longer even know blood, sweat and tears in their world. It's all trash.…

Of all four studio albums by power trio Cream, Disraeli Gears is probably their best. Released in 1967, it's a masterpiece in every respect, the kind of record you'd still struggle to match today... Above all, it's about individual musical…

This stuff is no joke! Perfect and warmly recommended for purists and worshippers of AOR rock -pure-blooded "eighties AOR rock. Final Frontier – the Canadians are back with their fourth album together. At first, "Freelight" was supposed to…

Bobby Bland is yet another in a long line of legendary blues musicians, but with one important difference. Unlike his "blue" colleagues, he never played guitar or harmonica, relying mostly on his one-of-a-kind v

Five O'Clock Heroes are proof that fairy tales still exist, or at least something pretty close to one. It all started when a young guy, Antony Ellis, fed up with what was going on (or not going on) in his hometown of Northam

This is pure hard n' heavy rock. German school. Raw production, direct and simple riffs, and a dash of melody. But only a dash, with no overblown detours into the waters of pomp and bombast. Guitars pushed to the front, a live sound kept…

Exactly two years after their singer Paul Baloff tragically passed away (02.02.2002), the thrash metal legends are releasing the album "Tempo Of The Damned". Steve "Zetro" Souza is back with the band. People can say what they like, but in…

It's a bit of a thankless job to review a cult release like this concert video, whose recording is still considered one of the best live albums ever, and not just in metal. Personally, I'm generally dead set against any

King Crimson are a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, the kind the world of rock music has precious few of. Over their long, rich and often chaotic career, even before the release of their legendary debut »In The Court Of The Crismon King« (1969)

The legends of Italian progressive rock turned out plenty of masterpieces in the past, especially in the first half of the 70s, and those records also stayed an unreachable standard for a long time, one that even two decades later nobody…

In 1975, things really started happening for Thin Lizzy. After a full year of touring, the lads released Fighting, their fifth album overall and the second since Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham joined the band. All in all, Lizzy's…

"Rock The Bones Vol. 4" is a compilation packing 31 tracks, let's call them the 31 most interesting picks from albums released in 2006 on Frontiers Records. The moment you say "Frontiers Records" it's obvious who this compilation is for

This release is the perfect kickoff to the new metal season. The debut of this new band brings together some seasoned players. Two Hellowen castoffs (the band reportedly just let them go after the last tour), guitar maestro Roland Grapow…

Panta Rhei, everything flows, everything goes... and after three years, it has flowed all the way to the debut from Avven. Formed in 2003, the band has focused on writing its own original songs from the very start, and after hard work, a…

Paul Weller, known as a member and co-founder of two hugely successful English bands, The Jam and The Style Council, and of course for the albums of his solo career, came to the realization that it would be smart to release a new live albu

The album that kicked off the British blues movement may sound a little naive today, but in 1966 it was a real small shock, and all the credit goes to Messrs. John Mayall and, of course, Eric Clapton. Eric, who had previously left the…

The Magic Numbers kicked up quite a storm with the release of their debut, and once the dust settled one thing was obvious: the top of the charts were almost unanimously telling the world this is the next best thing! And the expectations of…

Mando Diao are loyally building on their musical identity, and with the album "Ode To Ochrasy" they've only reinforced the demand they sparked with their earlier releases. Why swap out a winning horse? Well, for now

"Mary Rose return in grand, triumphant style with "Feniks". I'd go so far as to say that with the birth of "Feniks", after the slump with Martin Krpan, we're finally seeing the glory and honor of healthy melodic hard rock restored in…

Bolin's musical versatility is well known to everyone. In his short career, as a member of Energy, The James Gang, or on Cobham's Spectrum, for example, he convinced us of that without any trouble. But Private Eyes holds a special place in…

No, no, no! It's finally here! "Feniks" - the second album from Slovenian hard rock legends Mary Rose, from Postojna. Before we get into a detailed breakdown, let's run through a few basic facts. This album took a long time to make, a very…

Over the course of ten years, Arena have grown into one of the leading forces of neo-prog rock. Even though they'll probably never reach the popularity of similar bands from the '80s like Marillion, IQ or Pendragon, they have an…

This thing wraps up the band's first 10 years and also raises the question of whether they can keep up this pace for another decade. A greatest-hits album is no small matter these days. Then again, it depends on how you look at it. The…

After the release of the excellent box set "Archive Vol. 1: 67-75", which covered the Gabriel era, it was only a matter of time before a second box followed, similar in scope but devoted exclusively to the Collins era. That one did show up…

Best of Adrian? My ass!!! Pre-Christmas season, the perfect moment to squeeze as many jingling little coins as possible out of the masses' pockets. Except Running Wild are a tiny, tiny band on the music map these days, one that

Another peak moment for Slovenian music The band Hiša from Trbovlje is one of the rare phoenixes rising from the ashes of Slovenian music, but sadly, with every record, no matter how great, they get overlooked. And if we know that the…

"USA" was King Crimson's second live album, recorded on their American tour in mid-1974, which also turned out to be their last tour for seven years. For more than 20 years it was the only live document of the band's third incarnation.

Most Genesis fans will agree with me that the band's classic lineup (Gabriel, Hackett, Rutherford, Banks and Collins), which was active from 1971 to 1975 and recorded prog rock classics like »Nursery

This one is the real deal, incredibly authentic! Hard rock blast to the bone. And no, this isn't some pretty melodic requiem for unhappy love and "jerking off into the void". Brand New Sin, a quintet from Syracuse, presenting their third

Akron, Ohio. It's dead easy to picture the stale smell and ominous waters of the Mississippi, even though it's almost half a continent away. Life and time have ground to a halt here. No work. No prospects for young people full of hope. No

The emergence of the so-far little-known avant-garde rock outfit Od Franclna Možgani is a joy for all of us who admire, and have often missed on our home turf, bands that make highly creative, inventive

When Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker formed the power trio Cream in 1966, they really were "the cream" of the British music scene at the time. During the so-called R & B boom, a band appeared made up of

In 2005, Marillion recorded both nights of their annual two-day convention, where they thrilled the lucky crowd with performances of some of their lesser-known works, reworked takes, as well as a few hits they hadn't played in quite a few…

""Pofrancljevanje" is a hugely pleasant surprise that also marks an important turning point and new hope for Slovenian alternative, avant-garde and progressive rock"

"Smash and grab I stole your heart, burnin' rubber baby right from the start…" are the words that kick off this second album from the attention-grabbing American band Julliete And The Licks, and they also set the tempo for the whole record

»Mirrors« is the second concert installment of two live releases recorded at the band's traditional convention in the summer of 2005, which Marillion put out at the same time as another live album called »Smok

Evil is terrorizing planet Earth once again! Only half a year has passed since the band's debut, and the boys are back. They've made the music even nastier than on the first record. Finally, one of those Scandinavian bands that's been…

Ruffians were a seriously promising band back in the distant eighties, helping drive the new wave of the American heavy metal scene, which differed from the British one mainly in having less anthemic quality and epic bombast. That's what…

The second live album, after a long twelve years, has finally made it into the world. Honestly, that hardly matters given the sheer quality Annihilator deliver on it. There's no tamer out there who can handle this fire-breathing beast!…

Yet another batch of debutants with a first album on the scene. But anyone who knows King Diamond or Mercyful Fate has surely heard the name Snowie Shaw, a seasoned, battle-hardened old fox. When an artist like that sits down behind a…

It's been only a year and their new record is already out. So my worries were justified. How the hell are the songs even going to be finished properly? Am I about to witness yet another copy of "Carnival Diablos"? Questions like that

After the unexpected masterpiece "Nude" (1981), where Camel briefly returned to the high standards of the symphonic prog rock they'd cultivated in the 70s, on "The Single Factor" they almost completely switched to

Say what you want about Manowar. You can think their music is silly and shallow, mostly thanks to their mantra "We are metal – we are power!", which after 25 years sounds downright clichéd and

Cosmo? A father-and-son partnership! Fran (the dad) and Antonio Cosmo (the son). How the hell can that even work? But apparently there are exceptions that prove the rule. Back in the eighties, Fran founded the band Orion The Hunter,

Markonee are sleaze/glam rockers from Bologna, a city in neighboring Italy where real rock 'n' roll miracles have been happening lately! "The Spirit Of Radio" is their debut. You can feel on it that the guys are bursting with ideas, a need…

Royal Hunt! A live album! Finally! Since we haven't exactly shouted about the band much on the pages of RockLine.info, let me throw in a short bio. We're talking about Danish symphonic hard rockers with 8 studio albums behind them

A Swedish trio behind one of the biggest hits of this year. You simply can't NOT hear the song Young Folks! It's on the radio, on TV, on cell phones, and people all over Europe are whistling that instantly catchy melody

Before the unhinged composer Frank Zappa hit the music scene in the mid-60s with his no less offbeat but brilliant backing band The Mothers Of Invention, rock music (still called rock'n'roll back then) was, among most of the music community…

This guy is an outstanding musician, songwriter, and human being, one who simply has that ideal rock'n'roll touch in his blood, a kind of magic rocker's wand in his hand. Everything on this album feels so effortless and, in the same breath,…

You'd wish you could grab any studio album from this huge band to kick off a review of their rich discography on RockLine.info! Instead, it's this live record that landed in my hands first, of all things

Zion marks the return to the music scene of the excellent vocalist Freddy Curci, a Canadian whose career reaches back to the late seventies, when he was in the band Sheriff, and who is most admired for his contribution to the one and only…

What on earth can you expect from a Christmas album, especially when it's by a band like TWISTED SISTER? Considering they're one of the best-known hard rock, glam metal bands of all time, we probably

Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades are a couple of old hands from the American hard rock and AOR scene. Tommy Shaw was, and after a long break is once again, the guitarist and lead singer of Styx, put out a few solo records, and in the early…

A Montreal sextet of perfectionists is back, this time with a slightly less "ambitious" third album. Less ambitious only because its predecessor "No Cities Left" from two years ago was a truly megalomaniacal marvel, po

Once delinquents and eternal stoners, they've finally come back this year with a new album, and not with yet another batch of greatest hits or scraps that couldn't find a home on any serious record. Three years after the self-titled album,…

When the talk turns to British outfit Amusement Parks On Fire, you can't skip over Michael Feerick, a kind of wunderkind in the (almost) literal sense of the word: he's only just stepped into the second decade of his &#38

Even though I personally was never a die-hard NIRVANA follower, I've always respected them, knowing the mark they left on the music industry of the 80s. The truth is, though, that they skimmed the cream off the top of the Seattle cake, the…

DIVIDED STATES OF AMERICA (documentary film) Laibach North American Tour 2004 (Razdružene države Amerike -Laibach 2004 Tour) Laibach did their first tour of the North American continent way back in 1989, two years before the

Shadows Fall are today one of the best-selling bands in metal and probably even the best representatives of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal (NWoAHM) sound. Their 2004 album The War Within is Century Media's best-selling reco&sca

When Camel released "Nude," they probably didn't even realize they had once again created one of their greatest masterpieces after a long time, and an album that would go down as one of the best progressive rock albums of the early 8

Despite their well-earned reputation as modern masters of blending classic symphonic prog rock, jazz fusion, pop rock and a few other genres, Spock's Beard were long seen as a band that loves to play around with

With today's flood of MTV "metal" bands, it's almost hard to find a new, original metal act. One of those gems is undoubtedly California's Zero Hour. True, Zero Hour aren't a new band, far from it, d

They're members of the "United New England Hardcore Metal Bands" alliance, which includes Killswitch Engage, Hatebreed and Shadows Fall, and yet they're chasing a direction and concepts that are entirely their own. Whether that's possible…

The One I Love, Radio Free Europe, Finest Worksong are just a piece of the puzzle on the compilation R.E.M. put out this September. ˝And I feel fine: The Best Of the I.R.S. years 1982-1987˝ is dedicated to their so-called I.R.S. years…

The Beatles in the 21st century! How? The musical father of the greatest musical institution ever and his son (George and Giles Martin) have finally dragged the Beatles into the 21st century with the album "Love".

After a few misfires, Machine Head made an incredible comeback with the excellent record Through the Ashes of Empires, and now they've topped that return off with the DVD Elegies. VIDEO: The video quality is very good. The picture and…

On "I Can See Your House From Here", Camel predictably swung hard toward commercializing their sound, producing some material that had more in common with AOR and pop rock than with the symphonic prog

"Rubicon" is built on confessions about life's temptations, tied to Julius Caesar's historic crossing of the Rubicon and his famous line, "The die is cast!", before he pocketed

It's been two years since their last release, Starfall, and the time has come for Swedish melodic metallers Dragonland to make their return. They're back with a new record, Astronomy. Did they pull off a comeback in grand style? Just a li

CONTENT: I don't need to introduce one of the best thrash metal bands to you, but if you've never come across Megadeth, this documentary will walk you through them in great detail and in superb style. Behind the Music focuses on&#269

This release coincides with the 60th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest music icons of our time – Freddie Mercury, the immortal singer and all-round musician best known as the soul of the legendary band Queen. Modern rock

Meat Loaf. Mmmmmeat…Loaf. Meat Loaf. Honestly, I never quite wrapped my head around that name. Sure, he's a big guy and back in the day he played on a college football team (American football), but the name Meat Loaf, no matter how…

"Damaged" is the eighth (or ninth, depending on who's counting) studio album from Nashville's Lambchop, a band you could loosely file under alt-country. And quite possibly their best one! The competition is fierce, though: for some, their…

Iron Maiden have been setting the standard for quality DVDs since day one, and plenty of bands could learn a thing or two from them. The Iron Maidens don't do half-measures, and that's exactly the case with this release t

Thunder. The band that put themselves on the map for the wider public with their debut "Laughing On Judgement Day". It scored a few hits, then rattled off one solid but painfully predictable album after another. As is e

Alongside their earlier "singles collections," this is Depeche Mode's first official "best of" album, covering a career that now stretches over a full 25 years. The guys have shuffled the selection chronologically into a seque

Maynard's mother's 10,000 days of dying become the perfect jumping-off point for a new aesthetic "must have." With TOOL, the postmortem and the ecstasy fuse into one inseparable whole.

The Raconteurs are a "new band of old friends," or, as they put it themselves, "storytellers" — which is supposedly what the band's name means in French. On guitar, keyboards and vocals we find Jack White, who's here on a break from Meg…

Personality is an album that could have been recorded in the late '60s or early '70s, only to be shelved and forgotten until its rediscovery, all the way up to today. And yet, even though this is a very current release, it gives no hints…

What the Punk movement meant for songwriters, the "loudspeaker" means to guitarists everywhere. And what you'll find on the album "Loudspeaker" is a full-on guitar "Blitzkrieg" aimed at your speakers, which won't come out of the listening…

Systematic work, clear goals and more affordable software like Pro-Tool put all the aces in the hands of those who dare to take the risk and package, market and confidently defend their ideas entirely on their own

The Russian Futurists are a Canadian 'orchestral indie-pop' outfit who record a ton of music in their living room on next to no money. The Russian Futurists is basically a solo project of Matthew Adam Hart, who is the heart, soul and brains…

We've finally got them back, after almost 24 years of assorted "reunion" tours, infighting, media speculation, hearing loss and, last but not least, the deaths of some of The WHO's founding members. Today they proudly stand before us: Roger

Talisman! Six studio albums under their belt, 15 years of hanging out together, and yet…. Talisman! Record number "7". Is this the new classic melodic hard rock orgasm? Close. And then some! Actually

Declan O'Rourke is a young musician from Ireland. His debut record is named after a small Australian town where he spent some time with his family in his early youth. It's said to carry the memory of that place and above all of the priest…

At a time when grunge had hit its boiling point and punk on the radio had been tamed to fit the softer, mellowed-out demands of radio stations, Tool released their album Undertow,

What did the American market have to offer in the early nineties, besides grunge and metal soaked in nu-metal rhythms and Pantera-style vocals? Lachrymology and TOOL!

In recent years, Kamelot have built up a reputation as one of the most respected melodic metal bands around, and with their sharp instinct for blending melody, punch, symphonics, epic sweep and drama, they bring together fans of both power…

“The Very Best Of” is yet another solid best-of compilation from the cult band Japan, and the first to bring together material from their early label Hansa as well as the Virgin years

Camel were already showing the first signs of a shift toward somewhat shorter, more commercially accessible material on "Rain Dances" (1977). With "Breathless," though, they made the full switch in that direction for the first time and…

Melodic rock icons John Wetton and Geoff Downes are putting out another live album as Icon (fitting name), this time "plugged in." With these releases they're simply testing the waters for a long-promised Asia reunion tour of Europe. Asia…

The last thing you'd expect from a new Quiet Riot album in 2006, after more than 25 years in the game, would be a change in musical direction and sound. But the band's enviable history and metal pedigree speak for themselves, and unlike…

L.A. Guns first showed up as the L.A. supergroup of the day in the late '80s and stayed at the top of the glam metal heap for years with a string of great albums. The glam metal crowd of the time welcomed them with open arms, but few (even…

Even though he still hasn't completely outgrown the influence of Robert Plant and LED ZEPPELIN, Lenny Wolf keeps stubbornly paddling his way through rock waters with KINGDOM COME, and the new record “AIN'T NO CRYING FOR THE MOON” is proof…

No, we're not talking about some seventies disco diva! It's also not about the country singer of the same name or unreleased Marylin Monroe recordings. We mean a hard-hitting quintet from the suburbs of Atlanta, Douglassville to be exact,…

It's been a pretty metal-flavored year, where besides the new releases we also got the chance to grab and pick up stuff that would otherwise have slipped into oblivion. November is no exception, as the metal harvest is rounded out by the…