Reviews

"This album is simply more diverse, dynamic and heavy as fuck. Look forward to an album we're all extremely proud of…" (Peter Dolving) For those of you who've somehow managed to miss it until now: The Haunted were born from the ashes of the…

"Aurora Consurgens" is definitely a different beast from "Temple Of Shadows". It's inspired by an old book written by St. Thomas Aquinas, one that Jung supposedly used to draw connections between dreams and

Brooklyn outfit The Double serves up a very interesting mix of shaky, wobbly noise, loose melodies bordering on pop, and tunes you'll catch yourself whistling before you know it. But not every day. Only on cloudy days and foggy mornings.…

Does anyone out there miss the seventies? "Against All Odds" is a brand-new riff monster. A riff megalomaniac! Retro seventies !?!? No wonder, since it sails against the wind, against all the winds of "mainstream". Why have I been…

Ever since The Mars Volta burst onto the music scene out of nowhere, they've kept surprising us with their unbridled creativity and their own take on progressive rock, one that mixes elements of classic prog with elements from completely…

If you know King`s X or Platypus/Jelly Jam, you know Ty Tabor. Ty is the guitarist and lead vocalist in all of those bands and projects. So far he has put out three solo albums. The first was called “Moonflower Lane&rdquo

While recording Neal Morse's last three solo releases, the members of the multi-instrumentalist's regular studio backing band killed time by jamming their favorite cover versions of all sorts of songs. Besides the already

Winger were simply incredible when they burst onto the scene in the late eighties. They could serve up proper "mainstream" songs like Can't Get Enough or Seventeen, as well as artistically deeper hard rock achievements (In The Day We'll

Only a second solo album, after a break of more than 25 years since the debut? Well, fine, so be it! Especially when it comes from a seasoned old tomcat of show business who knows how to serve this stuff up. Then the rest of us can only…

Tommy Bolin. Who??? For all you youngsters who've never heard of him, or whose ears find the name a bit foreign, let me quickly sketch this super-guitarist, who sadly left our planet way, way too soon. “But he

AC/DC are one of the few bands to pull off an utterly unique combination of sharp, no-frills rock 'n' roll, instantly recognizable melodies, and loud music. Their rock, which hits the listener right in the chest, has been on the scene since…

Exactly two years have passed since their big comeback with the album “Start From The Dark”, and now Europe are back with their upcoming record, which will officially see the light of day on the Old Continent on 27.10.2006. This time…

United? Well,.. Is the record titled "Združeni" (Assembly of United Metal Labor) finally the sign of a solid crew whose lineup won't change from album to album? This time the excellent f

Planet Alliance is a project made up of stars pulled together from several well-known, respected melodic hard rock and "power" heavy metal bands. A union of people who are, or have been, members of: Cloudscape, Last Tri

Aaaaaaaa!!!! This is insane. Looks like bands in the US are finally kicking ass again the way they should! Metal is gaining totally new dimensions these days thanks to groups like The Mars Volta, Opeth or Mastodon. The quartet from Atlanta…

"911": the date marking the start of the Western civilization's decline – the end of US dominance, the end of US tyranny over planet Earth? A concept that has been stirring up Earth's inhabitants for years now and has been used in quite a…

"Karamba i karambita!" A full 30 years have passed since the debut of "the Swiss Saxon" "Krokus" (1976)! Not a single original founding member is left in the band today! The longest-serving member of today&sc

Faust have always been one of the most important krautrock bands, so it's no surprise that "Faust IV" is one of the best representatives of the genre. The album is both experimental and intense, but &sca

When I got this disc in my hands, I thought it was the new Severina album, at least until I took a closer look at the cover! For anyone who knows its predecessor “Burning Bridges”, let me say that Haste The Day stay stylistically true with…

With Fireball Minsitry, the listener can always strike a real pact that won't leave them hanging! These guys have an innate musical sense for what it means to be distinctive and to be the real deal! The true school of seventies hard rock.…

This record doesn't need many words, does it? UFO, legends, veterans,… for the second time this millennium without Michael Schenker and with Vinnie Moore on the new album. UFO are still firmly in the saddle. If you like&sca

»Terminate Damnation« is technically the debut from Becoming The Archetype, even though the band has already put out one album under the name The Remnant. This is an American band that managed to carve out a noticeable

These guys play a seriously eye-catching take on metal that could well win over a much wider crowd. Workaholics Scar Symmetry are back with their second album in just two years. Anyone who dug the debut will be thri

Whoa!?!? What won't end up in my hands these days? I never in a million years dreamed I'd get shoved into pontificating about Nickelback - a "post grunge rock" band whose massive success pulled the Roadrunner R

Rhapsody Of Fire, formerly Rhapsody, honestly come across as shocking with all their hyperactivity and unwavering devotion to their religion of Hollywood symphonic metal. Two years after the album "Symphony of Enchanted Lands pt. II - The…

What do the pedophilic tramp Aqualung, the underage prostitute Cross-eyed Mary, and the frigid, notorious village schoolteacher her pupils nicknamed Mother Goose have in common? They're not characters out of Kersnik's Village

"Aqualung" is the pivotal album in the band's history and one of the greatest works in the story of rock music, the record that cemented Jethro Tull among the immortal giants of rock. At the same time, it pushed the band up to a higher…

"Lipservice" is the eighth studio album from the Swiss hard rockers founded by singer Steve Lee, whose distinctive, raspy vocals are one of the band's main trademarks. The first thing that surprises you about this release is the

"A Live Record", Camel's first live album, is a superb showcase of all the best qualities of this remarkable band. Sure, it may have come out a bit late, especially considering that the band had by then released

Sunstorm is a project fronted by the legendary vocalist Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Deep Purple, Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force,…) alongside Germans Uwe Reitenauer (guitar), Chris Schmidt (drums), Jochen Weyer (keyboards) and a real…

And now Finland has gone off too! This country has also turned up a band that decided to cultivate classic melodic hard rock dressed in old-school AOR shades, but driven under the baton of the technological achievements of today's recording…

The first obvious question that comes up with the release of the new Pearl Jam album, self-titled "Pearl Jam", is: "How come it's only the eighth album, fifteen years into the band's career, that a studio album carries the self-titled

A year has gone by, and it's time for the power metal hammers to rise again, swing, and come down with full force to serve up a fresh, recycled creation. "Natural High" – the new EP from the Swedish metal elves, sporting a cover that would…

Saidian, a German "power metal" band that debuted last year with "For Those Who Walk The Path Forlorn", charges eagerly through their metal horizons and convictions, and here already comes the new al&scaro

The inventors of that horrifying rock creature known as "grindcore," active since 1981, punks at heart who gradually soaked up elements of the British "hardcore" sound (Discharge and co…) and fused it for good to their own umbilical

"The Black Flame" is the fourth studio album from Sweden's Wolf. As its predecessor "Evil Star" already made pretty clear, "The Black Flame" marks a move away from the clichés that, especially on their first two albums, Wolf borrowed far…

Superheroes is a "maxi single" that gives us Edguy's first quick taste of the studio album "Rocket Ride" (2006). As usual, the band didn't let us down this time either. There's over 25 minutes of music here, and it's the kind of release of…

This excellent German heavy metal band, which can't and won't betray its calling, has jumped ship this year from its home label Nuclear Blast to, surprisingly, an "anti-metal" label – the Italian AOR/melod

The long six-year wait is finally over. That musical oddball, the brilliant David Defeis, is back on his "black steed" and mercilessly hacking away with his sword, which is almost as big as he is (see the cover). This time he

Finns! This isn't just another »power metal« band, the kind this »brave new« world of ours is slowly getting sick of. Leverage are not Sonata Arctica, not Stratovarius and (thank god!) not Children of Bodom or Nightwish.

Mike Slamer, guitarist of Steelhouse Lane and Seventh Key - the hot side project of Kansas bassist Billy Greer - has been incredibly busy lately. The result is "Nowhere Land", his solo debut. Mike is known as an excellent producer

Unlike the first two albums, "Power Of The Night" is, in the words of band boss Jon Oliva, their "first real studio album." In many ways that's true. It was their first album recorded in a pr

Savatage's second album is in many ways a stylistic continuation of the debut "Sirens" (1983), but with a much heavier sound and improved production, which is a surprise considering both albums were recorded almost

The band could have rightfully named "Fight For The Rock" "Fight For The Nightmare", because they were truly unhappy with what they'd made at the time, or rather: with what they were forced to crea

Savatage were without a doubt one of the best American heavy metal bands of the '80s and beyond. Over the years, album after album, they steadily grew, both in their songwriting and in the depth of their lyrics, and in the '90s they started…

Holy mother of God, what a struggle it was to sit down and write something that should have come out under the legendary Savatage banner! Does it make sense for Oliva to close the chapter on the mighty Savatage? Nope. Not for the fans, and…

Another pretty surprising piece of work is in front of me! So what's spinning in my CD player this time? The new Into Eternity album! These guys are Canadian progressive metallers who inject elements of extreme metal into their foundation,…

It was high time for a new official live release from Hughes, following the unforgettable "Burning Japan – Live" (1994). "Soulfully Live In The City Of Angels" came out alongside the double "live" CD

Of course Duran Duran don't need any special advertising! The band is a plucky little ship of survivors that sailed through the eighties with great success on its own recognizable formula of the hugely popular wave of the time called New…

Unforgettable masterpieces like "Misplaced Childhood" happen only once in a career, even for top-tier bands like Marillion. For the band, the album wasn't just an artistic peak but a commercial on

Well, it's finally here! The band's fifth studio album in nineteen years of existence. Shadow Gallery are clearly total musical perfectionists, polishing, buffing and nitpicking every record until they fall short of what they &

Compared to its predecessor "Music For The Masses," Violator is far more geared toward "music to dance to" - it follows the techno dance boom trend that defined the turn of the eighties into the nineties. "Violat

Bališ is a rock band from Carinthia, a real alternative lifeline for the Slovenian people who, after (ah, how I hate dragging up the recent past) the infamous Carinthian plebiscite, ended up outside the borders of their would-be homeland

Master Hackett is like fine old wine. The years haven't touched him one bit, quite the opposite. He's still making music every bit as thrilling as when he started out. Unlike the previous album "Metamor

Singer Gary Hughes and the rest of the Ten "gang" have rolled up their sleeves and pushed out their new album, titled "The Twilight Chronicles". According to Gary, it's the biggest achievement of their career and their

Blind Guardian! Few bands in power metal today can boast the kind of originality and inventiveness that Blind Guardian can. Their albums are always a chapter of their own, and for years now each new release has landed in the narrow circle…

What is there even left to say about Bruce Dickinson, the singer of today's mastodon metal giants Iron Maiden, that hasn't been said long ago? He's truly regarded as one of the best vocalists in the metal world, and his body of work with…

On "Fugazi," their second album, Marillion got a lot more refined, found an even silkier, crystal-clear sound, and moved a little further away from flirting with the legacy of the giants

King Crimson broke up before this album even came out, totally out of the blue. According to guitarist and unofficial band boss Robert Fripp, the reason was the growing corruption that had started to eat away at the music industry and with…

GPS? What's that supposed to be now? That miracle gadget that lets even a blind man find a needle in a haystack? GPS - Govan, Payne, Schellen! Three seasoned musicians whom Asia boss Geoffrey Downes none too kindly, in a quick

Label: Bloodfish MusicRelease date: September 14, 2006Production: Gabriel MoffatAlbum length: 54.08 minGenre: Progressive RockRating: 9.0/10 Phideaux Xavier is a hyperactive American multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and TV…

"Time Lost" is an EP that came out after the album "Wounded" (1996). In 2002, both releases were remastered and put out as a double CD called "Wounded/Time Lost" via InsideOut

This time around, Enchant show up in the tightest, hardest-hitting light of their career. The push toward a heavier sound, driven mostly by guitarist Doug Ott, the man who writes all the songs, has caused the first serious

One of the main reasons the follow-up to "Blink Of An Eye" (2002) isn't quite as hard-hitting lies in the band's decision to bring in a new keyboardist, Bill Jenkins. You notice it right away in the sound, which is now spread equally among…

Barely a year after their debut, Enchant carried on down the path they'd laid out and went one step further. With the album itself titled "wounded," we can guess the guys went a bit &scaron

"Music For The Masses" was a kind of release-valve album for Depeche Mode. After "Black Celebration", which demanded a long production phase, the band was, despite the great results the album achieved, pretty ex&#

Po mojstrovini »Moonmadness (1976) so Camel prvič v svoji zgodovini naredili dve pomembni spremembi: najprej v zasedbi skupine in nato še v slogovni usmeritvi. Nezadovoljnega basista Douga Fergusona, ki mu ni dišala že prej n

The '90s were the golden age of modern prog. And in 1995 a handful of bands came out swinging with everything they had. For plenty of people, "A Blueprint Of The World" is still one of the most positive things to come out of this kind of…

Workaholic guitar master Roine Stolt is back with his modern prog rock monolith The Flower Kings. For good measure, it's a double album again, already their fourth, and it comes with yet another ambitious concept

"So here I am once more…" With those legendary lines, the revival of progressive rock kicked off in the early 80s. At a time when punk, new wave and synth pop had pushed prog rock almost to the brink of survival

Exactly one year after his last record, Cooper is back with ten new tracks on Raise Your Fist And Yell. First glance at the cover is rough, easily one of the worst designs ever for a Cooper album. Set the artwork aside, though

In 1986 we finally got Cooper's comeback, with huge expectations and in true eighties style. It had been only three years since the previous record, but a lot had happened in between, like another round of treatment for alcoholism. Alice…

It's been 25 years since the release of "Speak And Spell", and back in 1981 this album was an outrageous provocation, though today it's viewed in a completely different light. Given that the album was spreading its popularity at the time…

Who in 1989 would have predicted that Cooper's new studio album Trash would climb so high? Nobody. After switching to Epic, Cooper made his most commercially successful album to date, even though it's actually the least

When a new studio album drops from the man who goes by Axel Rudi Pell, a.k.a. the "German Blackmore," you honestly don't know what else to say, because it's all been said. He's one of the most dependable musicians out there, who

Fair Warning are back after a six-year "break" that had many people convinced the band was done for good. Why? After the release of "Four" (2000), the band split into two separate&

Lunatica are the band that, intentionally or not, slyly cashes in on Tarja's absence from Nightwish. A gorgeous female gothic vocal sits front and center as the main attraction of the band's sound. A band like Lunatica will grab a…

This is unreal! Scandinavian wunderkinds who ripen and grow up "too early". This time they've grown up into a "seventh wonder". Seventh Wonder deliver a flawless step up from last year's debut "Become"

How do you follow up the more-than-massive commercial success of the legendary album Trash? You practically can't, but in the ears of Cooper connoisseurs, Hey Stoopid did exactly that. What's more, this album is the real success at heart…

After the success of the studio album Trash, a live version of the album followed a year later, named after the tour: Trashes The World. The video recording of the whole show from Birmingham (England), which went down on December 14, 1989,…

Taz Taylor? Who the hell is Taz Taylor? An English guitarist who's been living in San Diego (California, USA) for a while now. Well, with Britain's modern-day stepmotherly treatment of its own musicians who can play and write &r

What is there to say about this The Beast Of Alice Cooper compilation? Not much, really, except that it packs fourteen first-rate classic Cooper tracks from the seventies, and that it was put out by his seventies label&#3

By the time of this album, the great Hackett had already built his image and reputation as a standalone solo artist who keeps surprising us with the depth, inventiveness and intensity of his work. Thanks to the success of his previous

After three successful years in which touring played a huge role, it's now time for the third studio album on Epic, and you could say it's one of Cooper's best albums, period. Alice shifts his style a bit compared to the previous Hey…

As you probably all know, Pink Floyd toured in 1994 in support of their last studio album, "Division Bell". It kicked off in March in the US, and in October Pink Floyd made a stop on the British Isles

Hey hey! How do the new Motorhead sound? Love 'em or hate 'em! The corpse has come back to life and it roars like someone cracking open a 10,000-year-old sarkofagus, the stone lid grinding aside as a hand riddled with worm tunnels, badly…

Forget everything Billy Sheehan did with Talas, Mr. Big or David Lee Roth! This record is miles away from the fusion rock Billy is currently "driving" with Niacin. What the guy delivers on his second solo album is a straight-up bullseye.…

I've always thought that Magna Carta's "Prime Cuts" compilation series is a great way to quickly introduce the musicians on the label's roster. Even though a few other labels had already gone for a similar

Two years have passed since "Antigone", and metalcore crew Heaven Shall Burn, with a sound that loves to flirt with old-school In Flames melodic death metal while keeping the roots of its hardcore, world-against-us attitude, stay loyal on…

Iron Maiden are back with their fourteenth album (incredible how time flies), sporting the philosophical title "A Matter Of Life And Death". After "Dance Of Death" (2003), a good album that nonetheless limp

The goal of this "comeback" album, 15 years on, is basically the same as it was with "Into The Pandemonium": shock people and spark a revolution. Only this time Celtic Frost go about it with an "innovation" of sonic experiments, a new…

This young Norwegian band is "sharpened" to the extreme! Last year they dropped their debut "Conspiracy In Mind", and here's its successor, album number two! The debut had already pegged the band as

Platitude are an interesting hybrid of progressive metal, power metal, and melodic hard rock. With their third studio album, "Silence Speaks," they've raised the bar on their own musical expression. Zrasl

You know how it goes. Your hour has come to pay for all your sins, you feel the rattle of the finger bones of Charon the boatman's icy, skeletal hand, and when he lays it on your shoulder you freeze up

Oh my, oh my, oh my! When I first saw the band's photo, I figured there were two bands with the same name and that I'd "surfed" onto the wrong one's official website. But no. These guys are decked out in full-on "black meta

Clearly, the first decade of the second millennium of the human era is the decade of bands mixing thrash metal with hardcore tricks. Sworn Enemy are back full of that kind of insight and outlook, with a second studio album that's brimming…

"Bottom Of Your Soul" is the latest track from hit-writers Toto, written in 6/8 time and, rhythmically, it's most reminiscent of the Toto hit Africa. Steve Lukather throws himself into the lead vocal, and a special guest also shows up

Derek Sherinian has put out his fifth studio album! Good boy, no doubt about it! An interesting record through and through. And a tough one to review. Expecting Derek as a keyboardist in the central role is pretty unrealistic, since in

Label: Island RecordsRelease date: 20. 11. 1970Producer: Greg LakeLength: 41.13 minGenre: Progressive RockRating: 9.0/10 When keyboard wizard Keith Emerson broke up The Nice, one of the best proto-prog bands around, because it had…

When keyboard wizard Keith Emerson broke up The Nice, one of the best proto-prog bands around, because they'd become too cramped for his extraordinary talent, he knew full well he was setting off on a whole new musical adventure. And when…