ELEMENT OF SURPRISE

For this second album, the band's music has taken a harder edge. Also, the band wanted to improve the vocals by spreading them out to 3 musicians. From the first song "The Scratch Funk" the music is a straightforward classic rock number played at a very fast pace and announcing the predominant role that the guitars will have the rest of the way. "Cliffhanger" put the guitars even further with some furious and heroic guitar lines with orchestral arrangement. "Outlaw For Good" is mostly an instrumental track after one minute of singing at the beginning. For the first time, we can hear the keyboards upfront and some Voivoid inspired guitar riffs. Samuel Ermellini delivers one of his many guitar solos. "Lifeline" is the first breather on the album with an acoustic intro and a song that goes into a definitive Rush style. "Tornado" like the title says is a fast pace powerful instrumental track with some Dream Theater time signatures and some welcome smoother guitar lines in the middle that is heartwarming. The last song brings back the acoustic guitar in the flamenco style after some heavy guitar parts again in the Dream Theater style. In conclusion, this album is highly guitar oriented and stay away for the Rush influence of their debut, and I think that if the vocals are not the most enjoyable thing you will hear, the songwriting quality level and the impressive playing of each musician make up for it. A solid 3.5 stars