Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: February 18, 2022
Production: Gary Hughes
Album length: 60.07 min
Genre: Melodic Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
Ten, the long-serving British masters of ultra-musical hard rock, are back this year with a new studio outing, “Here Be Monsters”, which is already their fifteenth. Gary Hughes, the band’s founder, vocalist, main songwriter and producer, is still the driving force keeping the wagon rolling unstoppably onward. The drive and the creative hunger aren’t fading. “Here Be Monsters” is yet another thrillingly seductive record, marked by that absolutely one-of-a-kind musical aura the band radiates like a calling card. You could call it a kind of magic that’s all Ten’s own.
In the world of melodic hard rock, Ten are complete oddballs. You either love them or you hate them – there’s no in-between. A bit like, on the other side of the fence, say, the much older Magnum, or the slightly less old Praying Mantis. With all three of these bands, you know exactly what you’re going to get. You know they can’t surprise you anymore, because they’ve recorded too many albums over their careers, but you also know they’ll always deliver a solid studio effort at the very least, if not an excellent one. They’ve got a fully chiseled style that’s instantly recognizable and that nobody but them can replicate. With Ten, that’s down not just to the songwriting but to Gary Hughes’s distinctive vocal charisma too.
Gary Hughes has always been surrounded by a whole bunch of musicians who’ve worked on individual Ten albums. Even in the early days, when Vinny Burns (Dare) was still in the band. These days Ten are a septet, and that lineup has stayed unchanged since the album “Albion” (2014). With three guitarists, two of whom handle the solos. As a songwriter, Hughes lets very little slip past him. Once again the man puts every move in exactly the right place. Even the seemingly darkest moments of the album, like the verse of Strangers On A Distant Shore, he flips into instantly igniting chorus melodies that unfold in full bombast and crawl right under your skin on first listen. Occasionally there’s a bit too much of that chase for ultra-musicality. Anything You Want, with some old-school late-seventies production, would be a cut-out pop rock number ready to enter the Eurovision song contest.
The lyrics are once again full of mysteries, mysticism, dragons sleeping in the middle of extinct volcanoes, adventures chasing lost jewels, gold coins and beauties. What Ten have developed and perfected over the years is the strong artistic structure of the individual songs. That shows especially in the “mid-eight” passages, as well as in the intros and outros. The motifs shift through modulations, which gives the album’s moods plenty of variety too, and the events build up a real dynamic arc across the record. Even when a song runs over six minutes, it never wastes the listener’s time. The instrumental parts are stitched with all kinds of ornamental motifs, mostly set in double-tracked harmonies in thirds. Once again the phrases are brilliantly balanced with symphonic elements, and the band leaves enough room for a classical piano to be clearly audible in the mix now and then. At times the band gets highly dynamic in how the compositions develop. But Ten have no moments of polyrhythmic notation, so the progressive rock/metal label simply can’t stick to them. Ten definitely don’t go that far. They stay true to their recognizable style, even if, especially across the last three albums, they’ve reached an exceptional reconciliation between dynamic songwriting and keeping the music highly infectious and compact. “Here Be Monsters” proves that Ten still haven’t stopped developing in this department. The longer instrumental passages, especially on the opener Fearless, then the extremely dramatic Chapter And Psalm right after it (at times Hughes comes across as a chansonnier here), plus Strangers On A Distant Shore, The Dream That Fell To Earth and Follow Me Into The Fire, are a real treat on that front.
“Here Be Monsters” is an incredibly strong album, and the opener Fearless announces that right away. This one track already has all the essential elements that let you recognize Ten in a heartbeat. Crowned with arranging perfection, which Gary Hughes follows diligently once again. The album closes as strongly as it opens. The final rondo of unbelievable pomp and bombast that comes with the new Ten album is kicked off by the phenomenal Follow Me Into The Fire, which is easily one of the album’s peaks, and it’s followed by the closing The Longest Time as an epilogue, with which Ten once again wrap up another studio adventure in superb fashion. At the highest level. Though here Hughes owes Bryan Adams a round, since the chorus melody (thanks to the chord progression), especially in the final crescendo, pulls straight toward Adams’s Heaven. It’s an album that fans of the band will welcome with total approval. Everything is once again right where it simply has to be with Ten. With a proven, mature upgrade in expressive artistry, which, despite the otherwise predictable course of events and the occasionally overdone hunt for musicality, delivers the realization that Hughes and his crew remain a musical wizard of their own kind, still masterfully tilling and tending their little musical garden.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Fearless
2. Chapter And Psalm
3. Hurricane
4. Strangers On A Distant Shore
5. The Dream That Fell To Earth
6. The Miracle Of Life
7. Immaculate Friends
8. Anything You Want
9. Follow Me Into The Fire
10. The Longest Time
Line-up:
Gary Hughes – vocals
Dann Rosingana – guitar
Steve Grocott – guitar
John Halliwell – guitar (rhythm only)
Darrel Treece-Birch – keyboards
Steve McKenna – bass
Guest musician:
Markus Kullman – drums
