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Artist: Michael Kiske & Amanda Somerville |
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I have
always been a fan of Michael Kiske since his days with metal legend
Helloween and what has been Helloween's loss has been Melodic/Hard
Rock’s gain, with Kiske appearing on many of best Melodic and Hard
Rock albums over recent years. And now thanks to Frontiers Records
President Serafino Perugino he has been paired with US singer Amanda
Somerville for a new album that will simply rock the Melodic Rock world. Along
with Kiske and Somerville this album also boasts a real cracking band
behind the vocalists, Mat Sinner of Primal Fear on bass and backing
vocals, Magnus Karlsson on lead guitar and keyboards, Sander Gommans
additional lead guitar, Martin Schmidt and Ramy Ali handle drum parts,
with Jimmy Kresic completing the star-studded lineup on keyboards.
With
Mat Sinner and Magnus Karlsson handling the songwriting along with
Somerville and Sanders Gommans, on paper this looks like being one hell
of an album. So do the credits add up in the final product?
Yes indeed! The
album gets underway in emphatic style with ‘Nothing Left To Say’, a
real classy hard rock to get things started, with Karlson delivering a
real guitarists role from the off, with some stunning licks, then it's
Kiske who takes the lead as he delivers a true vocal force as only Kiske
can. This package is then complete as Somerville comes in and delivers
one of the finest female vocals you’ll hear this year. The
tempo is brought back down with some epic metal styling with the superb
‘Silence’, which is actually the first single from the album, with both Kiske and
Somerville delivering a vocal that makes you wonder why this unity was
newer brought to light before now. This simply stunning release
continues with the rockin’ ‘If I Had A Wish’, a real corker of a
track with Karlson delivering some real punchy guitar licks, while
Sinner throws out some massive bass lines. If I
had to pick one outstanding track then ‘Arise’ would be right up
there, this is epic Melodic Metal at its best, grinding guitars, a power
driven rhythm section all capped with the stunning vocals of Kiske and
Somerville. The
top quality tracks continue with the stunning ‘End Of The Road’
which is very
much an epic and featuring some of Somerville’s best vocals so far on the
album. This release isn’t an all out rock opus though, this
track is more mellower that what has
gone before while retaining the quality of these two vocalists, which
all goes to making this one of
the stand out tracks of the album. The
pace and tempo is picked up once more with ‘Don’t Walk Away’
before returning to the darker side with ‘A Thousand Suns’ and the
magnificent ‘Rain’. Where
are the ballads I hear you cry? Well ‘One Night Burning’ is the one
for you. A track that stands out from the rest of the album as the towering
keyboard dominate this one. The keys continue to be an integral part of the
next one ‘Devil In Your Heart’. It has that epic feel to it
once more as
the keyboards and guitars are taken to up to another level. It's
back to earth with another ballad ‘Second Chance’ before the album
closes off with my track of the album the mighty ‘Set Afire’ which
rounds off my all out album of the year so far. |
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| Tracklisting:
1.
Nothing Left To Say |
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