The Reign of Terror
Sacred Ground
LMB
Fine true power metal with lots of speed, great guitars and vocals. Then again, this should be expected since Joe Stump is on guitars and Yngwie’s old vocalist, Michael Vescera, is in the band. The songs are solid power metal, and include plenty of metal guitar noodling from the very start. “Save Me” and “Sacred Ground” are quite fast, while “The Unknown” is more on the brutal end of things, if you can imagine a hair metal/speed metal hybrid slowing things down, hmmm, well the song is called “The Unknown,” maybe they were experimenting? It’s my favorite on the album. “Paginini’s Purgatory” is a wild instrumental classic and is best listened to as loud as possible. If you can remember the scene from Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie where Tommy Chong is “jamming” on his guitar and Cheech is prevented from entering the house by the sonic blasts of spastic solo guitar wizardry, that’s the effect it has. For fans of the melodic speed metal, this is a good addition to this year’s collection. Includes a great cover of Dio’s “Kill The King.”
LMB Music, Postfach 60 25 20, 22235 Hamburg, Germany; http://www.limb-music.de
