Artist: Relapsed 
   Title: Into A Former State
   Label: Mtm Music

After a 15-year hiatus the joint talents of former Caught in the Act, CITA, and Guild of Ages members Joe and Rob Malone and Danny Martinez have once again joined forces, and together with Brian Mesa on drums, have formed new hard rock band Relapsed.

Relapsed is a complexly different animal to the days of Guild of Ages.  The sound is bang up to date melodic hard rock of the highest calibre.

The album gets off to a very impressive start with ‘Welcome to my Life’, a hard hitting rock track that simply oozes class.  The quality continues with ‘End Of The Line’ another superb hard-edged track with some outstanding guitar riffs.

The entire album is filled with riff-laden tracks that will melt the heart of any hardened guitar fan. The band show how they progressed with a modern approach to rock in the form of one of my favourite tracks ‘Undone’, this is quite simply a monster track.  Another of my favourite tracks is ‘Broken’, once again another massive song with a huge chorus.

When the band aren’t all guns blazing they have a melodic side and this is shows on the tracks ‘The Other Side’, ‘Mercy Pays The Dept’, and the majestic ‘All In All’ with the latter reigning supreme.

But it’s the up tempo tracks on the album that really sold me, and they continued to impress with ‘Generation’ and the cover version of Queens ‘I Want It All’ is in a class all of its own.

With the instrumental ‘Alex’ making way for ‘Everyday’ and the album closer ‘Somewhere We Belong’, it dawns on you that you feel somewhat robbed the last 15 years of some outstanding musical talent, so let's hope the next album is in the pipeline soon.

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