Switzerland's Rizon is a big band, really, two vocalists, male and female, two guitarists, keyboardist, bass, and drummer, producing rather bombastic melodic power metal. Masquerade is their third album, the first with new female vocalist, Seraina Telli.
Above, Rizon: men in black surround girl in red.
Being my first experience with Rizon, my suspicions were aroused about the relationship of the male/female vocals. Would they be gruff male vocals (read death or 'core') challenging the siren sound of the female vocals. Thankfully, not. Both sing clean. Generally, the Matthias Gotz has the lead role, with Telli supporting in harmony, as on Sigh From Eternity or the very pleasing Remotion. Sometimes, she gets to step up as on Tears of the Sun. Ultimately, the vocal partnership is annealed by the sound vocal arrangements.
As to the music, Masquerade is generally rousing traditional heavy metal, with good melodies and notable hooks as heard on Same Same or Rise On. Guitar work is at a premium, and there's enough appropriate synth solos to suggest they don't exist only for accent. Several songs are longer, including Rise On, Out of Nowhere and Lost in Silence, allowing Rizon to stretch themselves, even seem epic at times. The album also contains El Dios, a song sung in Spanish.
With 13 songs, Masquerade is quite the platter of melodic heavy metal to digest. By the time you get to Cold Winter's Night or Time After Time, you may suspect a little redundancy and, then, wonder if it couldn't have been trimmed down by one or two songs. But in the end Masquerade is solid and entertaining album, good European melodic power metal. Recommended.
1. High Flyer
2. Sigh From Eternity
3. Masquerade
4. Tears of the Sun
5. Remotion
6. Same Same
7. Rise On
8. El Dios
9. Out of Nowhere
10. Cold Winters Night
11. Time After Time
12. Lost In Silence
13. Bells
Whenever a heavy band does an acoustic album one of two things results. Either they just record acoustic arrangements of their existing songs, and either stick rigidly to the original structure or create something new and more delicate from them, or they completely mellow out and record wholly uncharacteristic tracks with softer vocals etc. Strangely, Hungarian Soulfly-clones Ektomorf have done neither of these things entirely. What they have done is rearrange five older songs, write five new ones, and top them off with covers of Johnny Cash‘s Folsom Prison Bluesand Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s Simple Man. Re-recording I Know Themsets the tone with a full on bass and drums assault that really does sound like a normal, heavy Ektomorf song with the guitars unplugged, even down to Zoltán Farkas’ growled vocals. I’m In Hate is a similar story (even if the chorus does sound like “I’m in heat”), while Redemption takes on an Alice In Chains feel mixed with Rammstein‘s Los. Stigmatized gets a softer treatment to begin with, but goes heavy in the second half, and Who Can I Trust is given a complete Spanish guitar overhaul. With the covers, Zoltán’s voice doesn’t quite suite either of them, and the decision to give the first minute of Folsom Prison Blues, which mostly sounds like Volbeat are playing it, the effect of an analogue radio with poor reception is strange, but overall at leastSimple Man is a great rendition. The real highlight appears amongst the new songs though. Be Free is actually a full-on heavy song much like the version of I Know Them, while ballads Again,Fate and Through Your Eyes are all a bit too alt-radio-rock, but To Smoulder is the kind of track the whole album should really have sounded like. Again much like an AIC acoustic song it’s dark and brooding without trying to be heavy and without being too “safe”. More like that, with some of the rearrangements and some slightly wiser choices of cover songs would have made this a superb record. Instead it’s only a slight-above-average one
01. I Know Them (4:39)
02. I'm In Hate (3:46)
03. Be Free (3:26)
04. Redemption (3:38)
05. Simple Man (5:01)
06. To Smoulder (3:17)
07. Folsom Prison Blues (3:10)
08. Again (4:07)
09. Through Your Eyes (3:23)
10. Fate (2:07)
11. Stigmatized (5:00)
12. Who Can I Trust (5:42)
Band Night
Info: Night
Style: Melodic Rock / AOR
Years: 1979
Info: CBR 320 kbs
Info: 84,54 Mb
Info: USA
Tracklist:
01 - Hot Summer Nights.
02 - Cold Wind Across My Heart.
03 - If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody.
04 - Ain't That Peculiar.
05 - Come Around (If You Want Me).
06 - You Ain't Pretty Enough.
07 - Shocked.
08 - Love Message.
09 - Party Shuffle.
Band Paula Abdul
Info: Forever Your Girl
Style: Pop
Years: 1988
Info: CBR 320 kbs
Info: 105,69 Mb
Info: USA
Tracklist:
01 - The Way That You Love Me.
02 - Knocked Out.
03 - Opposites Attract.
04 - State Of Attraction.
05 - I Need You.
06 - Forever Your Girl.
07 - Straight Up.
08 - Next To You.
09 - Cold Hearted.
10 - One Or The Other.
Band Orleans
Info: Before The Dance [Compilation]
Style: Westcoast / AOR
Years: 1978
Info: CBR 320 kbs
Info: 100.88 Mb
Info: USA
Tracklist:
01 - Let's Have A Good Time.
02 - Dance With Me.
03 - Wake Up Let There Be Music.
04 - Let There Be Music.
05 - The Last Song.
06 - Sweet Johanna.
07 - Sunset Money.
08 - Money.
09 - The Breakdown.
Band Nektar
Info: Nektar [Compilation]
Style: Progressive Rock
Years: 1976
Info: CBR 320 kbs
Info: 100.79 Mb
Info: UK / Germany
Tracklist:
01 - Do You Believe in Magic.
02 - New Day Dawning.
03 - Wings.
04 - Cast Your Fate.
05 - Cryin' in The Dark.
06 - King Of Twilight.
07 - Burn Out My Eyes.
Band Boston
Info: King Biscuit Flower Hour (Bootleg)
Style: Hard Rock
Years: 1977
Info: MP3 CBR 192 kbs
Info: 86.1 Mb
Info: USA
Tracklist:
01 Rock And Roll Band.
02 Shattered Images.
03 More Than A Feeling.
04 Drums & Guitar Solos.
05 Peace Of Mind.
06 Something About You.
07 A Man I'll Never Be.
08 Smokin'.
09 Blues Intro.
10 This Time _ Slow Blues.
11 Foreplay _ Long Time.
12 Television Politician.
It's been 6 long years since Finnish 'Horror Metallers' Domination Black's second album titled Dark Legacy, was released. Then in the end of 2009 the band lost their original singer Kapa Killgast and started a desperate search for a new vocalist. Eventually a guy called Matias Palm (known also for his other bands Heavy Metal Perse and Merging Flare) was found to replace Mr. Killgast and Domination Black were ready to kill again – at least with the new stuff they had so intensely managed to rehearse for their upcoming third record, which was baptized by the somewhat mind-tickling title Dimension: Death.
Domination Black's ex-vocalist Kapa Killgast was a great singer, often being compared to Tim "Ripper" Owens, but so is the band's new vocalist Matias Palm. Two great vocalists with two whole different vocal approaches, so suffice it to say there's no point to start comparing them to each other. What comes to Domination Black's third album, well it truly is different music-wise compared to the guys' two previous full-lengths but that doesn't mean they would have sold their souls at the altar of commercialism to gain more listeners to their side or anything like that. What Dimension: Death actually is, it's undoubtedly a more mature, refined and thought-out package from the Domination Black camp, there's not even a question about that. Musically the band has slipped a bit away from their heavy, Thrash-oriented Heavy Metal sound and added a remarkable amount of prog-ish elements into their current sound on Dimension: Death. The album sort of reminds me of what Dream Theater did on their Black Clouds & Silver Linings album, even if Domination Black use all those progressive elements more like a welcomed spice within their songs more than feeling an urgent need for getting credit as some full-blooded progressive Metal band, which they obviously are not – and should not ever be.
I would also say it's a really brave attempt from the guys to open up the whole record with the album's most epic and lengthy song called "Legacy of Fears", lasting over 10 minutes, but then again, the guys have succeeded in capturing all the right and essential components into this song in order to keep it interesting and variable enough. In "Porter at the Gates of Hell", which is one of my personal favorites off the album, Matias uses his whole capacity in a great way, at times managing to sound a lot like Rob Halford at his sixties. Guitar melodies in this particular song give a reason or two to believe the Murray/Smith span ain't anything new to the guitar span of Domination Black, Wiren/Heiskanen (start listening from the 2:32 and 3:28 minute marks - and again from the 4:10 minute mark). "The Final Sigh" is a straightforward and thrashy tune, accompanied with Matias' very Halford-like vocal approach, which gives its favorable and necessary kicks for me at least. "Angel Dark" slightly reminds me of some epic and pompous Tarot song, while a very catchy "Evilizer" twists my finger from finding this well-worn repeat button from my stereo system. The ending of the song is very Priest-like again mainly due to Matias' raspy, high-pitched screams.
I must confess I had my own fears as to how Domination Black's third would turn out to be like without their ex-vocalist's presence as an integral part of the band's sound. Thankfully all those fears have been wiped off now by the performance of the new vocalist and his band mates. Will this record become Domination Black's own breakthrough album? Time will tell...
01. Legacy of Fears
02. Passage of the Dead
03. Porter at the Gates of Hell
04. The Final Sigh
05. Dimension: Death
06. Cold Touch
07. Angel Dark
08. Evilizer
09. The Hellbound
Band Face Face
Info: Bridge To Nowhere
Style: Melodic Rock / AOR
Years: 2006
Info: CBR 224 kbs
Info: 63,62 Mb
Info: Switzerland
Tracklist:
01 - Lights Of New York.
02 - Walking On Sunshine.
03 - Don't Stop.
04 - True Love.
05 - Bridge To Nowhere.
06 - Close Your Eyes.
07 - Sin City.
08 - White Rose.
09 - It's Not The End.
10 - Desire Burns Like Fire.
Band Paul Thorn
Info: Are You With Me
Style: Melodic Rock / AOR
Years: 2004
Info: CBR 320 kbs
Info: 107,99 Mb
Info: USA
Tracklist:
01 - Lover's Vacation.
02 - If I Can Get Over Her.
03 - High.
04 - Love On Me.
05 - She Won't Cheat On Us.
06 - That's A Lie.
07 - I Don't Wanna Know.
08 - Are You With Me.
09 - If You Can't Love Me 4-Ever.
10 - Nothin' To Show For It.
11 - Almost What You Need.
12 - Love Will Find You.
Kscope is pleased to announce the release of Not The Weapon But The Hand, the new album from Steve Hogarth and Richard Barbieri. The album will be available from February 27th 2012.
Hogarth is best known as the frontman of Marillion, the progressive rock legends that he joined in 1989, following spells in The Europeans and How We Live. In addition to the 12 studio albumsMarillion have released in this time, he has also recorded and toured as a solo artist, under the moniker H.
In recent years Richard Barbieri has been a core member ofPorcupine Tree playing keyboards on all the band’s albums since 1993 as well as releasing two solo albums, Things Buried andStranger Inside. Prior to this, it was in the new-wave pioneers Japanthat he originally came to prominence, helping to create the groundbreaking synthesiser sound that defined the band and influenced the likes of The Human League, Duran Duran, Gary Numan, Talk Talk, Kate Bush and a whole raft of other artists, including Hogarth.
The band also influenced Hogarth, at that point playing keyboards in The Europeans; 'when I was in my mid-twenties Japan's 'Tin Drum' album was a firm favourite and truly a groundbreaking work... Japan were one of those rare bands where each musician seemed to have reinvented his instrument overnight. Central to this sound was the unmistakable synthesiser programming/playing of my, now, chum Mr B.'
01. Red kite (7:25)
02. A cat with seven souls (5:49)
03. Naked (6:14)
04. Crack (4:47)
05. your beautiful face (6:47)
06. Only love will make you free (8:10)
07. Lifting the lio (6:01)
08. No the weapon but the hand (1:25)
