Artist: Axel Rudi Pell  
   Title: Mystica
   Label: SPV Records

As one of Germany’s premier guitarist’s for the past 25 years, Pell has brought some of the most melodic guitar metal to a wide audience and stamped his name firmly into the legends of rock.

'Mystica' is the bands seventeenth album and once again Pell has enlisted the talents of Johnny Gioeli on vocals, Mike Terrana on drums, as well as Ferdy Doernberg on keyboards and Volker Krawczak on bass.

The album itself once again highlights the talents of Gioeli’s vocals and Pell’s uncompromising guitar style.  The album opens up with the now seemingly compulsory intro ‘The Mysterious Return’, before getting to the real meat and bones of the album with ‘Fly To The Moon’.  A track that really kicks off from the onset with some classic Pell guitar licks and a raucous drum beat from Terrana, but it's Gioeli’s vocals that add the real spice to the whole album, and I don't just mean on this one track.

The album continues to rock with the anthemic ‘Rock The Nation’ and ‘Valley of Sin’, a track of epic proportions with its gentle start, with Gioeli almost narrative opening before the axe is wielded by Pell with those tell tale melodies and spellbinding solos.

After the seven-minute epic of 'Valley of Sin' it's back to the hard rock with ‘Living A Lie’ before the ballad ‘No Chance to Live’.  A song about the sombre subject of animal testing.

The title track ‘Mystica’ is one where Pell really comes into his own with some quite outstanding pieces of hard rock guitar on what is essentially another epic track.

The only instrumental on the album is a beauty with Pell mixing some majestic solo’s with a classical vibe on ‘Haunted Castle Serenade’, but this is just the prelude to my favourite track off the album the rock infested ‘Losing The Game’.  A track where Gioeli really shines out as a vocalist.

The album closes with another epic ‘The Curse Of The Damned’, at nearly ten minutes long this is a track that is pure melodic power metal, with this atmospheric rocker the band closes what is a great hard rock album and one that should have instant appeal to Pell’s diehard fan base and also to those who like good honest metal played with style and grace.

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