699. Stiff Little Fingers / Inflammable Material. 1979. 4/5

I was not quite in a position to be in and around the punk scene when it was at the height of its power. My first exposure to punk was in the mid-1980's as my friends and I began to gain the experience of those around us in regards to music. I first heard the Stiff Little Fingers at a high school camp in 1985, and from that eventually got around to buying and listening to all of their albums.
Inflammable Material is their debut album, and is arguably their finest work. Fuelled by their youth and their anger and any number of other influences, the majority of this album is exactly as it should be, and though there are a couple of hiccups thrown in for good measure, in the long run this still stands up as well today as it did back when it was released.

Most of the songs use the conflict in and around Northern Ireland as their basis, and as such they are as confronting as many of the best punk songs try to be. "Suspect Device" is an awesome opening song, and still one of their best ever. It combines everything that is great about the band - angry spitting lyrics from Joe Burns, that real punk guitar sound and riffing from Henry Cluny and terrific rhythm section from Ali McMordie on bass and Brian Faloon on drums. It is raw and aggressive and leaves you in no doubt to their emotions. Great stuff. This is followed by the less agro "State of Emergency" before the short, sharp retort of "Here We Are Nowhere".
"Wasted Life" is another the band's best known songs, a terrific song focused on anti-government and anti-war themes. This was no doubt an anthem for many young people in Northern Ireland at the time, and again Burns' vocals leave you in doubt about what the band thinks of it all. "No More of That" follows, and is of the same theme, in a shorter and punchier style.
Okay, so the next song is "Barbed Wire Love", for which I have very mixed emotions. Punk music has always drawn on several other genres of music to incorporate into its style, the biggest being reggae. But here Stiff Little Fingers has brought in an almost 1950's 'slow dance' feel to the middle stanza of the song as Burns croons "All we neeeeed, is Barbed Wire Loooooove". It's a clever song of mixed metaphor lyrics as well as music, but I've never been sure as to whether I like this song or dislike it.
"White Noise" is perhaps not politically correct in this day and age, but is indicative of the anger that was being felt at the time it was written. "Breakout", to my mind (and it's only my opinion) seems to be written about the band itself, wanting to break out of the lives they are living, and try and find a better life by the 'success' of the band. Lyrically it could equally be about general life in Northern Ireland at the time, but to me the lyrics seem to be a bit more personal. "Law and Order" spits viciously about the treatment of locals by the 'authorities', while "Rough Trade" is belligerent on how they see the dishonesty of the music industry.
Perhaps the most surprising song on the album is the extended cover version of Bob Marley's "Johnny Was". It is surprising to me, I should say, because although punk does seem to have some roots in reggae, this version successfully seems to siphon most of the reggae sound out of the song, and while it sticks closely to the natural speed of the original version rather than a faster paced full-on punk version, it still fits into the framework of the album thanks to Burns' wailing vocals.
"Alternative Ulster" is the other great song on this album, and frames it up nicely, before "Closed Groove" completes what is a very impressive debut effort.

I have loved this album from the moment I first bought it. It may not be perfect, but it's flaws are not huge noticeable ones, and as a punk record I find it more entertaining and listenable that almost all others of the genre. The songs are angry, but catchy. You don't have to have grown up in Northern Ireland to feel the aggression and accountability that the band has weaved into the songs here. This stands as a monument to the punk era, and is still a great listen today.

698. Queen / Queen. 1973. 4/5

Like most people of my generation, I came to know and love Queen from the singles that were played on the radio. For me, my first memory of Queen was "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" back when I was ten years old in 1980. The first Queen album I ever purchased was 1984's The Works. It wasn't until the 1990's, when I finally had an income of my own, that I started to go back and find all those albums from the 1970's that I had rarely heard apart from the singles and the live albums, and it was then that I first laid my ears on their eponymous debut album.
Queen is a product of its era, of a band trying to find its own sound. The songs here can be heard to be a meshing together of different types of music genres that were making themselves heard at the time leading up to the recording of this album. There is a hard rock element, driven at those times by Roger Taylor's crashing drums and Brian May's superb guitar work. Along with this can be a quieter introspective tide, while the use of longer freeform instrumental jamming that was prevalent during the late 1960's and early 1970's is also in effect. This album is different, almost unique from the albums that followed, which also moved with the times that they were recorded in.
The great danger in knowing so well what the band produced in the 1980's and coming back to listen to their earlier recordings is dismissing it because it is different, and not what you know. That would be a great shame, because this still an excellent album to this day. It has their earliest efforts in producing their layered vocals, and while the production mightn't be at its best, you can still appreciate the quartet's wonderful brilliance.

"Keep Yourself Alive" is still one of the band's most famous and great tracks, rumbling along with terrific guitaring and Freddie's vocals. It should always come under mention when you discuss the best ever "Album 1, Side 1, Track 1" songs. "Doing All Right" is one of those songs from that era which has a little bit of everything. It was quiet acoustic and piano parts, with Freddie backed by Roger and Brian's vocals, then without warning jumps into hard and heavy, almost punk guitar riffing with drumming to suit, then back to the quiet verse, and so on. It is a strangely formulated song, almost in a progressive rock kind of way. Something for everyone there. "Great King Rat" again has a somewhat hard rock progressive way about it. It is a heavier song throughout, dominated by the guitars of Brian and John Deacon and the thumping drums of Roger, with some time and tempo changes throughout the song. In fact, it can almost fool you into believing it is two songs, such is the change about halfway through, where a quiet interlude then crashes out into what is actually the second half of the song, but could easily be mistaken for the next song on the album. "My Fairy King" is full of what would become the trademark Queen vocal harmonies and overdubs. Roger Taylor can be clearly heard hitting the highest notes within the song, something that he probably doesn't receive enough credit for in his singing with the band.
"Liar" is another of the band's better known early songs, and again shows their ability to change between toying with a heavy sound and the quieter thoughtful process again in the construct of the same song. "The Night Comes Down" is a quieter song, and is followed by the Roger Taylor written and sung "Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll" which is much more up-tempo than its predecessor. This flows straight into "Son and Daughter", which perhaps best reflects the blues and heavy metal sound that was being produced by bands such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin at the time. Brian and John's guitars certainly reflect that sound throughout the song. "Jesus" finishes with an instrumental flurry, which itself goes into "Seven Seas of Rhye", a 75 second instrumental that concludes the album. Apparently Freddie had been writing this during the recording of this album, but hadn't finished it when it was time to publish. As a result, this is what was recorded, and the full finished version of the song with lyrics was released on Queen II.

I think this is a good album, full of good songs and plenty of initiative. Those that grew up with this album are more of the opinion that Queen was at their best in the era of the 1970's, while those who grew up with their 1980's music often feel the reverse. I don't have a solid stance either way, though if I was to rank my favourite Queen albums the majority at the top would probably be from the 1980's. Nevertheless, this is an album full of good things, and should not be dispersed without giving it a fair hearing.

697. Sonata Arctica / Silence. 2001. 2.5/5

Sonata Arctica's follow up to their acclaimed debut Ecliptica will no doubt keep hardcore fans of the band animated and happy. For me, I was hoping for more than that album was able to provide me, and unfortunately I didn't really find that.

The fast paced, high intensity, at your jugular songs on Silence are some of the best this band has produced. "Weballergy" opens the album at a cracking pace, and from the outset it feels as though this could be the direct extension the band needed to take. "False News Travel Fast" continues in this direction, punchy and driven by the double kick drums and flying keyboard. "Black Sheep" is a good song that doesn't really showcase anything particularly metal, but moves along at a good tempo with a flailing guitar solo. "San Sebastian (Revisited)" again has that speed driven by the drums to give it some real momentum and wonderful vocals. Along with "Wolf & Raven" later in the piece, these are the stand out songs for me on the album, and if there had been more of them this could have been a real classic.

The major downfall of the power metal album is the constant power ballad. Dear oh dear, these kinds of songs just rip the heart out of an album and consign them to mediocre status. It is such a contradiction in terms, power and ballad. Because for all intents and purposes, there is very little if any power in these ballads.
"The End of This Chapter" is the first to arrive on this album, piano and keyboard dominated, while the vocals reach for their emotive state to tug at the heartstrings. "Last Drop Falls" and "Sing in Silence" also fall into this category to a certain degree, if only for a majority if not all of the song. "Tallulah" is the worst, it being in the Bryan Adams or Michael Bolton class of dreadful sappy unresponsive rubbish.
If bands want to make songs like this, then fine. Do it. But how about you put ALL of them on ONE album, put a big sticker on it to inform everyone exactly what the album contains, and allow those of us who just don't want to know to completely ignore it, and buy your albums that have the best songs on them. I mean, for goodness sakes, "Tallulah" is followed by the brilliant "Wolf & Raven" that careers along at breakneck speed throughout, barely stopping to take a breath. Everything about it screams speed metal, and yet the previous song was a sop-driven bore-fest. I just can't understand it. "Tallulah" is an automatic skip song. In the old days of transferring vinyl to cassettes to play in the car it would never have made my taped copy, and in this day of electronic media and so forth, you can even erase it from existence.
But somehow it isn't over. The lengthy and overblown finale of "The Power of One" just seems needlessly long. It starts, it stops, it goes fast, it goes slow, it wants to be a metal song, it wants to be a ballad. Does it want to be "Bohemian Rhapsody"? I don't know, but given that it doesn't know what it wants to be it's a little hard to take. Parts of the song are terrific, but others just are mystifying. Time and mood changes at odd parts of the song make it hard to stay in synch with. It feels like they wanted to pull every trick in the 'power metal song writing' handbook in one song.

I want to love this band so much more than I am able to. Their musicianship is flawless, the vocals are pitch perfect. The trappings of the genre mean however that I am unable to enjoy a lot of their music because it just isn't in me to like it, and that is a real shame. Those that love this style of metal will probably embrace this album with vigour. I can only admire what it is, enjoy the parts of it that I do, and move on from the rest.

696. Newsted / Heavy Metal Music. 2013. 3.5/5

After years of waiting for the re-appearance of the "real" Jason Newsted, his revitalisation has finally arrived in the form of his band's first full album, daringly titled Heavy Metal Music. I say daring, because it could have fallen flat on its face if it couldn't live up to its name in the ears of the listening public. Everyone's idea of heavy metal is probably different, but Newsted can rest easy on this occasion.
What I get most from this album is that there is a great solid base in every song to launch into something even more powerful and memorable, but in some ways it never quite happens. I just felt that with most of the songs, they could have used a bit of thrash speed about them to get the most out of the riffs that were a part of the songs. For the most part this settles in a very moody metal kind of tempo, never really extending itself beyond the same time signature all the way through. In some ways I feel like the music has been written around the lyrics, and given that Jason knew he was going to be playing as well as singing, he didn't want to move too far away from the mold he had set so that he didn't have to complicate things. Perhaps that's unfair, and also wrong, but that is what it feels like to me when listening to some of these songs.

I like the opener "Heroic Dose", it starts the album off on a great note. It has a good riff, nice solo, and Jason's moody vocals over the top. This is followed by "Soldierhead" from the Metal EP, which is excellent, utilising a bit more speed than is prevalent through most of the album. This was Jason's first released taster from his "return to heavy metal" which was well received at the time. "As the Crow Flies" is another great tune, again set up by a solid riff underlying the whole song and accentuated by the vocals. Terrific stuff.
"Ampossible" has a very Hendrix guitar riff to begin with, before settling back into a similar rhythm as is the mindset of the album. Jason bravely puts his vocal range out there on this, stretching it to its limits. I admire his courage because that's not an easy thing to do when it isn't the best string to your bow. This song rocks even moreso because of it. "Long Time Dead" is another rumbling creeper, building nicely in energy and aggression throughout the song with the drums and guitars and especially Newsted's vocals to a satisfying conclusion.
"Above All" sounds to me a lot like an Alice Cooper song on crack. The guitars sound like an Alice Cooper album from the late 1970's, and even Jason's vocals remind me a lot of Alice Cooper, especially when he is singing "you're freaking out, you're freaking out, you're freaking out!". This is a different style from earlier songs, but it works in well.
"King of the Underdogs" is the second song from this year's Metal EP, which initially helped the album because of its familiarity. "Nocturnus" is a slower, darker song, emoting memories of early Black Sabbath in tempo and composition. "Twisted Tail of the Comet" is another eclectic piece, again drawing from Sabbath's legacy when it comes to the guitaring late in the song. This is another song which builds through the song to end on a high. "Kindevillusion" and "Futureality" close the album out, and while they are both okay, I think they are both just a little overlong and repetitive.

Personally, I think it is great that Jason has gotten out there again and put himself forward. This album finally says "this is me, this is my music". It is something we have all been waiting for since he terminated his role in Metallica. I think we all expected something special from him - I mean, why else would you leave Metallica if you didn't have something brilliant to share with the world? Then we suffered through the agony and pain that was the cesspit called Echobrain, the reasonable efforts with Voivod, and the calamitous rabble of Rock Star: Supernova. After all of that, one had to wonder if anything good would ever come from the past decade of turbulence.
And so we have Heavy Metal Music. It isn't Album of the Year material, it isn't even Debut of the Year stuff. It is a very solid metal sounding album, with some good riffs, some good lyrics and some good intentions. I admit that I expected something a bit more punk oriented and with a bit more speed than the majority of this album contains, but all that aside, there is some excellent stuff here. And let's face it, this is just the beginning for this band. As a starting point, it is well worth getting on board.

695. James LaBrie / Impermanent Resonance. 2013. 3/5

Dream Theater lead vocalist James LaBrie continues his impressive musical output between his band's albums with his latest solo band effort, Impermanent Resonance which is another step forward in this vector of his career. Having built up his band over the course of his last couple of solo efforts, they come together here and really begin to make there own mark.

The album kicks off in a frenzy, which really hits you from the first moment of the first song. The heavy drum and guitar riff is offset by LaBrie's brilliant vocal alongside the screaming vocal of his drummer Peter Wildoer. "Agony" is a fantastic opening track, combining the best elements that this band has brought to the table in recent years. The energy and preciseness of the music sets the album off with a bang. This is followed by "Undertow" which continues in this frame. It is easy to see influences from bands such as Linkin Park and Sevendust, but they have really made their own sound from these influences. The opening tracks are aggressive yet placating, expressive yet stylistically within a rock framework. It is great to hear this album has set itself apart from the style that is prevalent in Dream Theater. Whereas their music can be technical to a fault, with time changes thrown in as much to be different than to serve the purposes of a song, this is much more of a straight forward heavy rock sound and beat, sticking to historical beats rather than trying to reinvent the timescale. Wildoer's screaming vocals really bring a new dimension to the music, and further from hindering LaBrie's natural brilliant vocals, they complement them wonderfully within these songs.
While I think the first half of this album is excellent, I do believe it drifts off in the second stanza, and heads towards a disappointing conclusion. Songs like "Back on the Ground" and "Holding On" I find tedious and boring, given their natural tendency to drift towards being a power ballad but try to stay just heavy enough to be catagorised that way. Even "Lost in the Fire" is that way inclined. "Say You're Still Mine" is very much a power ballad, and really does kill the latter part of the album for me. The closer "I Will Not Break" helps balance some of that off, there is just a little too much... softness... for me in the back half of this album.

Marco Sfogli on guitar is again superb. It's a tough ask to have someone ask you to play guitar in your "other" band, knowing that you are going to be compared to that "other' guitarist. His work here and on previous LaBrie albums does not pale in comparison to John Petrucci, though there appears to be less of his break out guitar solos as there has been on previous efforts. Wildoer's vocals are well supported by his terrific drumming on this album, and Ray Riendeau is great on bass. Co-collaborator and keyboardist Matt Guillory has again done marvellous work in both writing and playing on the songs here.

In the long run this is a mixed bag whichever way your music loyalties flow. I'd have loved to have heard more of the metal energy that cam in the first four or five songs of the album, whereas others may think they came at them too hard, and prefer what comes on the second side of the album. Perhaps in an effort to keep everyone happy, they may well have done neither to any great satisfaction. A good album, that perhaps could have been better.

694. HammerFall / Legacy of Kings. 1998. 3/5

There's a saying that basically goes "when you are on a good thing, stick to it". That saying could accurately be used in describing the writing and recording of Legacy of Kings, HammerFall's follow up to their highly acclaimed debut album Glory to the Brave. Legacy of Kings follows a familiar and well-trodden path that resulted from the first album. In fact the same writers wrote the majority of this second album, even including Jesper Strömblad who had moved on from HammerFall before the recording of the first album due to his commitments in his main band, In Flames.
Songs like "Heeding the Call" and "Legacy of Kings" and "Let the Hammer Fall" are very similar in anthemic structure to the best songs from the debut album. Add to that "Stronger Than All". These four songs in particular could have come from the session writing for the first album. All have similar parts to them that can be found on songs from that album. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as they are all good songs, but it can be a little disconcerting.

It's the good songs here that keep bringing you back to this album. It may not be a strong throughout as Glory to the Brave but it has enough so that you want to listen to the album even with its weaker links.
"Dreamland", "Remember Yesterday" and "At the End of the Rainbow" all form a solid middle stanza. The solo in "Warriors of Faith" shows where their influences come from, a very Helloween/Gamma Ray influenced riff. This is even more strongly accentuated with the bonus track at the end of the album, which is of Helloween's "I Want Out", featuring guest musician and vocalist Kai Hansen on his own creation.
The sting is well and truly taken out of the tail with the closing song. "The Fallen One" is a ballad that reeks of trying to capture fire in a bottle, to recreate the success of "Glory to the Brave" which was the final song on the album of the same name. It was an attempt at an anthemic ballad that for the most part worked. Here, though, "The Fallen One" allows all of the previous energy of the album to seep away, stealing the album's mojo and dragging it back in the eyes of the fan in comparison. It is a weak finish, unworthy of what has come before. The fact that on discs that contain the bonus track as the final song (the aforementioned "I Want Out") this is salvaged because of it, is irrelevant. A real shame.

Joacim Cans is still the star ingredient in this band. His vocals carry this band to a higher level, and make up for any faults that lie elsewhere within the whole package. This time around though, the music itself is presented better. There was an erstwhile sloppiness about some of the playing on Glory to the Brave, but here it is tightened up much better, along with metronomic drumming to keep everyone together much better. The riffs and solos are also better written and played than on the previous album. While the songs and energy themselves were better on the debut, this has a better sound and feel because of these factors.

I still like this album a lot, but even with that being the case, it feels too similar in writing and performance to the first album to really be comfortable with. I'm not against going with what you know has worked before, but you have to change some of it to give it its own individuality, and realistically that hasn't happened here. While it is still miles ahead of some of the stuff the band put together following this album, it can't really hold a candle to the album that came before it. Glory to the Brave and Legacy of Kings could almost be said to be twins, but Legacy of Kings is the Danny de Vito to Glory to the Brave's Arnold Schwarzenegger in this family.

693. Fucked Up / The Chemistry of Common Life. 2008. 3/5

My discovery of this band came at the Soundwave Festival in Sydney in February 2013, a chance discovery on an outer stage. The raw energy and enthusiasm of this band was not only completely refreshing, it brought me back to a genre of music that I hadn't really thought of in a very long time. I had listened to punk bands and hardcore bands in my youth, stuff like The Clash, Dead Kennedys and Misfits to name a few, but I hadn't sought out any new material in this genre for years.

When I first got this album and listened to it, it took me awhile to come to terms with it. The main reason for that was... well... it's not just a punk album, or a hardcore album. It's an eclectic mix of a whole range of things that, if taken singularly one at a time, makes for a very surreal and unusual experience. I mean seriously, what is with the freaked out, 60's flower power keyboard driven 'instrumental' "Golden Seal"? How do you come to terms with that following up a gangbusters start like "Son the Father" and "Magic Word"? Well, the truth is, once you have played this album about twenty times, it starts to blend into the landscape of the album, and you become much more used to it that if you just plucked that song out and played it on random on your iPod.
What gets me most about this album is that, apart from Pink Eyes unique vocal capacity, these guys are much closer to being an experimental band from the 1960's with a modern twist than a true punk or hardcore band. Take the vocals out of "No Epiphany" and you could easily mistake this for a hippy fest on a long freeform experimentation quest. And if that is what passes in this day and age for punk or hardcore then I am a very poor judge. But again, once you have listened to this album on a number of occasions, you cannot really just review it on a song-by-song basis, because as an album complete I think it works. Don't get me wrong, it is the true punk/hardcore songs on here that I like the most, when they just let themselves go, and you can imagine themselves jumping around the stage as they play.
So what is it about this that draws me to it? Perhaps the fact that it isn't what I expected when I first bought it. That at moments when it feels as though it might be drifting away from, rebounds back with a vengeance, like on "Twice Born". Maybe because it isn't just a high intensity, fully blown hardcore album that takes itself too seriously. Or perhaps it is something else that I can't place.

Look, am I going to be jumping out of my skin to grab this CD off the shelf and throw it on my stereo? Probably not. When it comes to listing my favourite albums of all time, is it one that will pop into my mind as a contender? Not likely. Neither of those things can deny the fact that this band has got something that draws me to them, and that this album, while flawed in some aspects on a song-by-song basis, as a package is a creeper.

692. Black Label Society / Sonic Brew. 1999. 3.5/5

The debut album for Black Label Society is a real melting pot of just about everything you could possibly imagine - southern blues rock, hard core metal, brilliant guitar riffs from one of the modern masters, slow doom metal in an almost Black Sabbath setting, average pass-mark songs, acoustically driven riffs and the grinding and sometimes hypnotic vocals from the lead man himself. If you can't at least find something interesting amongst all of that lot then you are in the wrong place.
Zakk Wylde breaks away from his father figure Ozzy Osbourne here to produce something that is completely different from what he was playing and writing for the previous decade. In a refreshing attitude he hasn't tried to reproduce that kind of music, instead blending his own roots to what he enjoys playing and bringing it all together in a package that is hard to define in a genre sense.

The mixture of songs here is as unusual as it is impressive. Vocally, Wydle is similar but different to Ozzy, and even though he does not try to mimic him at all you can pick up similarities at different times. His break out solos still steal the show, especially in early songs like "Bored to Tears" and "The Rose Petalled Garden". The opening riff of "Hey You (Batch of Lies)" is just awesome heavy stuff, before settling back into a battle between the more mellow then aggressive lyrical snatches. A really diverse and effective song.
"Peddlers of Death" has breakout solos, heavy riff, but is divided on a couple of occasions by some of Zakk's quiet piano driven melody in different parts of the song. Only Zakk Wylde could get away with doing something like that without destroying the song. "Mother Mary" is as belligerent a song as Zakk can dish up, in your face for most of the four minutes with more great guitar work. This is as far away as you can get from the start of the next song, whose mellow section of "Beneath the Tree" is almost like Soundgarden or very possibly like Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan", but is combined brilliantly with Zakk's moaning vocals once the song kicks into gear. It's a band-defining song, showing the various levels that they can put together in their song structure, and that they have their own style without trying to sound like any other band.
"Low Dow" is back in your face, before the acoustic riff jam of "T.A.Z." again surprises you with the diversity on this album. "Lost My Better Half" is one of the heavier songs on the album, led by a great riff and vocal. There are some Tony Iommi solo moments through some of these songs - have a listen and try and pick which songs he may be paying tribute to, because it's a little too close on some occasions for it not to be deliberate. The album finishes up with two of my favourite songs, "World of Trouble" and "The Beginning... At Last", which are separated by the acoustically balladesque "Spoke in the Wheel" which again showcases the diversity that Zakk is capable of.

There is a tendency for the songs here to get a bit "samey", in that the guitar riffs through the songs seems to be a little bit repetitive in places. A lot of that is to do with Zakk's signature guitaring being prevalent all the way through, as well as his squeals. It could also be argued that he moves between the heavier riff and the quieter acoustic or piano a little too regularly to be considered a change.
As an outlet for his own musical writing away from his main gig with Ozzy Osbourne, this was an excellent first album for his 'other' band, which in recent years has now become his main focus.

691. Avantasia / The Metal Opera. 2001. 4/5

When I first heard of the concept of recording an album entitled The Metal Opera, I thought it was a great idea. Of course, some "knowledgeable" people came out and suggested "it's not an opera!" Well of course it isn't, but what a terrific idea. Write a concept album, with not only a storyline but characters that can be portrayed by some of the finest singers in the power metal genre. Put together an all-star band to lay down the music, and voila! You have the beginnings of an "opera" staged and written for the heavy metal world.
What was better was that you couldn't argue with the line-up of talent that was drawn to make this happen. The brainchild of Edguy front man Tobias Sammet who also contributed keyboards, we have Gamma Ray's guitarist Henjo Richter, Helloween's bassist Markus Grosskopf and Rhapsody of Fire's drummer Alex Holzwarth. Along with the band, just some of the vocalists lending their support to the project to support Tobi's main character of Gabriel Laymann are Michael Kiske of Helloween fame as well as other projects, Rob Rock of Impellitteri and other bands, Andre Matos of Angra, Timo Tolkki of Stratovarius and Kai Hansen of Gamma Ray. Sharon den Adel from Within Temptation is excellent in "Farewell". A terrific line-up.

In the long run, you can take or leave the story that is being told here if you like (if you are interested, the Wikipedia page can be found here), but none of it would work unless the songs and the vocals made it so. And there is no danger of that not occurring here. "Reach Out For the Light" is a brilliant song, mixing the wonderful vocals of Sammet and Kiske along with some magnificent guitaring from Henjo. The whole song is a triumph, and sets the album off at a cracking pace. While the mood of the album meanders throughout as the story changes, it is anchored in that power metal style, with everyone's nuances combining excellently. Henjo Richter's distinctive solo's are wonderful, Markus Grosskopf's bassline's are just as powerful as they are in Helloween, Alex Holzwarth's drumming is just scintillating in places, and helps to set the stage for each song. Not only is it powerful, and the tempo just right in all respects, it has been set up perfectly by the producer and sound engineer - it doesn't become overpowering, but it is also prevalent in each song. Just wonderful.
The middle of the album rocks along, with "Serpents in Paradise", "Breaking Away" and "The Glory of Rome", with David DeFeis and Rob Rock making great contributions. "Avantasia" is the big anthemic piece of the album, the one crowds would no doubt find to be the feel good song of an operatic production.
Given Kiske's stated preference for less heavy material, it is somewhat amusing that the slower balladesque "Inside" has vocals by Kai Hansen, something he also does well, though to be honest I would loved to have heard him on something faster. Instead, Kiske powerfully brings home the closer "The Tower" to finish off the album in an uplifting speed metal way.

Tobi Sammet is prominent most of the way through the album, and his vocals are terrific throughout. Having made several albums with his band Edguy before The Metal Opera, this became a halcyon period for him, with this album and its sequel, as well as what I consider his best Edguy albums, Mandrake and Hellfire Club, all in this four year period. He is wonderfully supported by Michael Kiske who, having suffered somewhat from his post-Helloween days and statements that he was uninterested in the metal genre, shows here exactly how talented he is. His vocals on this album are the equal of anything else he has ever done. I don't think it is any coincidence that probably the five best songs on the album - "Reach Out For the Light", "Breaking Away", "Farewell", "Avantasia" and "The Tower" - are the five songs where Kiske and Sammet perform together. They are brilliant together. The music throughout is amazing and brilliantly performed by the four piece already mentioned.
In the long run this all-star production more than holds its own as an album of substance, creating and showing off the best that this genre of metal has to offer. It may not be seen as a real opera, but in heavy metal it is an album that it can be proud of in showcasing the great talent of the industry.

690. Russell Allen & Jorn Lande / The Battle. 2005. 4/5

How do you go about putting together a "super group" project? Usually it will be a couple of people from separate bands, who might get together over a beer and suggest to each other that they should "do something together". Demons & Wizards, the project put together by Iced Earth's Jon Schaeffer and Blind Guardian's Hansi Kursch can be seen in this situation. Or a group of musicians who aren't doing a whole lot at that point in time decide that they should get together and do a project, a little like Mike Portnoy and Russell Allen with Adrenaline Mob.
Back in 2004, session guitarist Magnus Karlsson was asked to put to write and record an album that would feature two high profile vocalists singing in duet and duelling on vocals. Those two vocalists ended up being Symphony X's front man Russell Allen and Masterplan front man Jorn Lande, and the album because The Battle.

The majority of the songs have these two great vocalists sharing duties, while there are also songs where each vocalist has the duties to themselves. Karlsson wrote all of the songs and lyrics, and played all of the instruments except for the drums which are handled with aplomb by Jamie Salazar. In this respect Karlsson has done a wonderful job of writing and performing. The mix of songs is terrific, ranging from heavy and faster metal songs to solid hard rock songs, most with a very progressive edge to them. The mix between the keyboards and guitars is performed excellently, allowing for the distinction between the out-and-out metal songs and the keyboard-hinted power metal songs.
Both parts of this work perfectly. The music never interferes with the brilliance of the vocals of both Allen and Lande. When they are singing, they are dominating the songs. In between however, there is some sensational guitar work from Karlsson, and some of his solo work is awe inspiring. It may only be a studio project, where all of these pieces have been fused together to make great songs and a terrific album, but that does not detract from this in any way.
The songs on which Russell dominates are the naturally strong heavy metal songs, while those where Jorn is the driving force tend more towards the power metal side of the coin. It is quite possible that the songs were written in such a way, or that the vocals of these two just naturally flow the music in that direction. No matter which way you look at it, this album is able to juggle the slight changes in music without ever losing the completeness of the album. It's middle ground is the progressive nature of the music without losing the basic concept of hard rock's beat and rhythm and metal's guitar-based heaviness. Certainly there are songs on here that are my favourites, and there are others than I can quite happily gloss over if given the opportunity. But on the whole this album should please most people who enjoy this genre of music, and certainly anyone who knows the vocalists will not be disappointed.
While the mix of vocals is great, I must admit that it would have been good to hear somewhere in the list a bit more of a duelling effect between the two singers. I'd love to have heard them going off against each other during the middle of a song, exchanging vocals in a lyrical battle in a way akin to the name of the album.

The success of this album has led to two further being produced, and a fourth apparently in the pipeworks. This was a pleasant surprise when I first acquired it, and that feeling hasn't subsided when listening to it to this day. Perhaps some people would think it to be too much of a formula-driven effort, given that one person performed the majority of the roles in getting the album to its completion. Perhaps that is the case, but it is an enjoyable album to listen to in all respects, and that should be the key no matter how or who got it to that point.

689. Primal Fear / Primal Fear. 1997. 3/5

Primal Fear is a project that came together with the initial pairing of bassist Matt Sinner, from the veteran German metal band Sinner, and vocalist Ralf Scheepers. Scheepers had parted company with Gamma Ray a few years previous, and had since auditioned for the lead vocalists job to replace Rob Halford in Judas Priest. When that didn't come through, these two formed the band, and produced this eponymous debut album.

The influence of the writing is pretty hard to miss. Scheepers' vocals had always lent themselves to a very Rob Halford kind of similarity, and while this album is not a Judas Priest clone, there are certain nuances that can be easily heard. Chainbreaker, the very Judas Priest-esque opening song leads off with that very direction in mind. A number of other songs on the album also have that Priest sound about them, though in many ways that can be attributed to the way Ralf sings those songs than probably any deliberate attempt to make them sound like the legendary British band.
There's an interesting cover version of Deep Purple's "Speed King" (entitled "Speedking" here), one that will probably divide most listeners. Many will enjoy the faster, heavier version of the classic song and revel in it, while other will no doubt find that the general essence of the track has been compromised, allowing the best parts of the original version to leak away. I personally enjoy Primal Fear's version while still believing that the original version will always be the best. Kai Hansen makes a guest appearance on the album, laying down guitar solos on "Formula One", "Dollars" and "Speedking" which adds a nice touch.
"Battalions of Hate" is one of the catchiest songs on the album, a good rhythm and drum beat with Scheepers' vocals at his best. However, to be honest, the remainder of the album is pretty stock standard fare, which doesn't make it bad, but probably robs it of some of its originality. The songs are solid if unspectacular, and can become enjoyably familiar or steadily dull depending on your mood at the time.

There's nothing overly breathtaking here. As a debut effort it is rock solid, utilising the best aspects of the European power and speed metal genre mixed with a healthy dose from their metal influences. I enjoy the album now as much as I ever did, but perhaps the enjoyment I get from their following albums is what leads me to look for the best in this release. Not a bad starting point, but better was certainly to come.

688. The Rods / Heavier Than Thou. 1987. 3/5

Following on from their previous release, Let Them Eat Metal, The Rods have backed up here with an album of differing quality and direction. Half of it appears to be an effort to blow the speakers off your stereo in both speed and sound, while the other half could in some ways be considered a plagiarism of another famous band's best assets.

Opening up with the instrumental chorusing of "Heavier Than Thou", the album starts off with a bang with the hard rocking anthem of "Make Me A Believer". This is followed up by the equally good "Angels Never Run". Both songs have the best aspects of The Rods' better work, a feisty pace driven along by a great drum beat and guitars, some excellent guitar riffs and solos, and high intensity vocals that provide some catchy lyrics. Great stuff.
"Crossfire" is almost a crossroads of the album, a point where you will decide whether or not this has any promise. Moving the style back into a power ballad area, this has the hallmarks of a Whitesnake ballad of the 1980's, with the song and vocals all carrying a very Coverdale emotive feeling about them. This is how the song progresses, until the final minute, when it breaks into a much faster pace as the guitar solo kicks in to finish the song on a high note. Whether this works for you or not will probably dictate whether you enjoy the remainder of the album. It really is a two-part song, which seems a little strange no matter how many times you listen to it.
Now we really move into the generic hard rock material, both musically and lyrically, that sometimes almost gag-worthy kind of stuff that, if you grew up listening to it you can probably take it, but if you did not then you could easily write-off as trash. "I'm Gonna Rock" still shows its Whitesnake tendencies. "She's Trouble" moves along at a cracking pace, a real hard rocking number extolling the virtues of the wily female that all bands seemed to meet sometime during their performing days. Then we move onto "Born to Rock", because we all know that EVERYONE is born to rock! These three songs in particular are very much tied to this metal scene of the mid-1980's. Generically they are all of  similar performance as anything you could name from bands such at Ratt and Dokken and Britney Fox from the same era, and quite honestly are equally as well done in my opinion. When it comes to whether or not you like these songs, well, isn't it just like any style of music from the 80's? It might be 'bad' but you still 'love' it. And feel free to add in "Chains of Love" here too. The lyrics might be a tad too much to take sometimes, but the music is doing all of the right things.
Just for fun, there is even a cover Led Zeppelin's classic "Communication Breakdown", that the band has a lot of fun playing with. There is a major return to the Whitesnake sound for "Fool for Your Love", again in both the tempo and in Feinstein's vocals. "Cold Sweat and Blood" avoids this similarity, and concentrates once again on a solid rhythm section, a breakout guitar solo and strong vocals throughout.

I first went into this album not expecting anything out of the ordinary, and to be honest that's what I found. But what did impress me was that their 'ordinary' songs here are actually good hard rock songs, with plenty of enthusiasm throughout and punchy, catchy tunes. It may not be to everyone's taste, and it may not be a remarkable album, but it can't be accused of not providing the listener with an enjoyable 43 minutes.

687. Judas Priest / Rocka Rolla. 1974. 2/5

For most fans or acquaintances of the great Judas Priest, this album would probably be a complete mystery. Shrouded in the mists of time, with very little exposure to the world, this is Priest's debut album, one whose style is as startlingly different to what most fans began with when sampling this band as is Alice Cooper's Pretties For You or Pantera's Metal Magic. The fact that the band has ignored it completely when it comes to live sets for over 30 years can probably show that the band thinks their material improved significantly after this album. But everyone has to start somewhere, and while the band that influences their early sound, Black Sabbath, has a debut that is still ranked as one of the most important of all time, not everyone can hope for such status.

While this album is a good deal mellower than the raucous and metallised material that was to come down the line, there are certain moments when you can hear that fabled Judas Priest sound in its infancy. For the most part, however, this album is rooted in the folksy blues music that feels as though it would be much more suited to the late 1960's rather than the advancing of the mid-1970's. A lot of it could almost be influenced by the first couple of Deep Purple album's, which is somewhat surprising given what Deep Purple had evolved into by the time this album was released. However, having said this, it has been reported that many of the band's better known and stylistic songs, such as "Tyrant", "Genocide" and "Victim of Changes" were ruled out of being placed on this album by their producer. These songs of course eventually found themselves onto the next album, which itself is much more recognised as a Judas Priest sounding album.
There is no duelling of those two Downing and Tipton guitars here, and there is no hint of any of the speed and heaviness that was to come from this band as they established themselves. The songs tend to just plod along, the drum and bass beat sometimes barely getting above a crawl as Halford croons lightly over the top.
"One for the Road" is especially like this, struggling to ever reach its conclusion as the bulk of the song just repeats itself over and over again. The first single, "Rocka Rolla" is a better song with a slightly rockier feel, and the dual guitars making themselves more prominent, as well as the shirking squeal of Halford's harmonica. Still, it sounds more like The Eagles than Judas Priest. The suite of "" is an interesting delving into more hippy rock along with the very 1970's guitar improv. For much of the time it feels as though perhaps the album has stopped, frozen in time if you will. It's a very... unique... almost Pink Floyd expedition, and one that seems so very unlike the band that was to emerge from this album.
"Cheater" comes across in a similar vein as "Rocka Rolla", closer to a rock song that the other efforts, with a snazzier pace and the return of the harmonica, but more importantly those single guitar solos that showcase what makes this band great. "Never Satisfied" rambles along, again falling in to the trap of predictability and sameness. "Run of the Mill", while being a slightly long and overdrawn song, showcases Rob Halford's amazing vocal range for the first time, as he really ups the intensity towards the end of the song. It wants to be "Victim of Changes" but it doesn't have the power or the catchiness of that great track. "Dying to Meet You" slumps along at the same tempo as much of the album, a sluggish song that barely keeps the listener interested. The micro half-song that follows, "Hero Hero", comes much closer to being in the same street as you would expect of a Judas Priest song, but again it is much too little in comparison to the whole album. Rocka Rolla closes with a two minute instrumental titled "Caviar and Meth", a song that apparently in the days before Al Atkins was replaced as lead singer by Rob Halford was in fact a fourteen minute monster. What was recorded here was just the introduction to that original piece.

As a piece of history, especially of this band, this is an interesting listen. It is not completely hopeless or a write-off, but it is of a different era, and most certainly was written and performed that way. While it is worth a listen for all of the fans who have not experienced it, in the long run I would be surprised if many fans revisited it on a regular basis. There are only at least a dozen albums by the band that make more enjoyable listening that this.