Hummm… I was tempted by the finnish freaks Lordi last week when I went to the music store. I bought Deadache and then I was good for a dose of ghoulish european hard rock.

Mr Lordi and his monstrous bandmates provide us an album that follows the trail of Arockalypse and Get Heavy. Classic hard rock that has a good vibe and sounds like classic rock from the 80s. Lordi have always admitted that Kiss were a good inspiration for them and it is quite obvious when we listen to Deadache. The album does not contain any ass-kicker song but possesses a good mix of catchy songs that amateurs of the genre will surely like. The guitar is not highly technical and the melodies are just entertaining enough.

I cannot say that Deadache is a groundbreaking album but it surely delivers what was expected: good gory and theatrical hard rock with assorted lyrics. These finnish have a lot of imagination, believe me! Remember that they won the Eurovision contest 2 or 3 years ago hehehehe. Deadache is worth a good 7,5/10!

Our fellow canadian hard rockers released Dark Horse a few weeks ago. I was not expecting a lot from them because Nickelback’s last two albums sounded too cheesy and too much commercial for my taste when compared to the formation’s first opuses. But as soon as I listened to Dark Horse, I was hit by a train! The heavy riffs and powerful sounds were back again! God I was happy! They are healed!

The first song, Something In Your Mouth, is quite bombastic and kisses asses very well. Burn It To The Ground followes and is very good too. I also liked If Today Was Your Last Day and Next Go Round (a good hard rock song) and S.E.X that has a nice chorus. The rest of the album sounds like traditionnal Nickelback but with a greater sound quality according to me.

Dark Horse is a good 2008 surprise for me. It deserves a good score and I recommand it to everyone: 8/10.

OK here is the first of my three CD reviews for this end of the year 2008. Like many others, I have bought the long-awaited Chinese Democracy from Guns N’ Roses (or should I say Axl & Co. because the group has nothing to do with the classic lineup of the 80s and 90s). My conclusion: well… hum… not bad at all but definitely not as good as the classic stuff.

It’s hard to understand why Axl Rose waited 14 years to release this album. But Axl himself is a “concept” hard to understand. Was it worth the wait? Yes and no… I was expecting the classic sound of the Use Your Illusion and Appetite For Destruction albums. I was a bit deceived by what I heard at the first time, not to say shocked a bit. Especially when I heard If The World that sounds like a Moby song. I think that what irritates me the most in this album in the use of techno-trash sound effects in the songs. Please Axl, leave that annoying stuff to the others. But Chinese Democracy also contains a few good songs like Shackler’s Revenge and Streets Of Dreams. Nevertheless, we are far from Welcome To The Jungle and November Rain.

I can now confirm one thing: Guns N’ Roses is not the same without Slash and the rest of the bunch. Axl himself can claim to possess the rights on the group’s trademark name, the album he took 14 years to deliver doesn’t match what the real Guns N’ Roses gave us two decades ago. Axl should definitely reunite with the former gang… And then Guns would kick ass again!!! So here I go with a 7/10 for Chinese Democracy.

The world-renowned Aussies hard-rockers are back into prime time with a new release entitled Black Ice. And God it was about time that AC/DC delivered its fans some new music. The band’s last record, Stiff Upper Lip, hit the shelves back in 2000 (8 years ago). It was definitely about time! But believe me my friends, the wait was worth it because Black Ice is once again another excellent release from AC/DC.

There are no surprises in Black Ice: pure hard-rock songs recorded in AC/DC’s classic style, i.e. with a tint of blues. Brian Johnson’s voice is still as good as it was 8 years ago. No sign of fatigue here! Angus Young’s riffs are still edgy and persuasive. Cliff William’s bass guitar, Phil Rudd’s drums, Malcom Young’s rhythm guitar, everything is very tight.

I invite you to take a look at the album’s booklet to see what 8 years do on rockers in their late 50’s. The guys look quite older hahaha… William now has almost all-white hair. Rudd now sports Elvis-style sideburns. I love it hehehehe… But Angus starts to look a bit silly in his classic schoolboy uniform. But a trademark is a trademarks and you can’t touch this! So in the end it’s fine with me!

Rock And Roll Train is my favorite song on the album. Wheels is quite good either, so are Big Jack and Rock N Roll Dream. The latter one, though, has a slower beat which makes us feel that it’s almost a ballad (but is it not). The rest of the songs sound like stuff we already heard from AC/DC. Black Ice is definitely a collectionner item, a keeper as we say. Not a groundbreaking album but It’s worth a good 8,5/10. Long live to AC/DC and I just hope I’ll be able to see them in show once in my life.

Here come Evergrey with their follow-up to 2006’s excellent Monday Morning Apocalypse: a new album titled Torn. After having listened to the CD a couple of times, I just can’t say that it’s good and I can’t say it’s bad neither. Actually I don’t really know what to say about it.

Torn is a classic Evergrey album. It is smoother that its predecessor. It contains pretty good guitar solos (especially one in the song Numb that I like a lot). But it does not contain any groundbreaking songs, songs that will be remembered for a long time. The songs on the album have a very dark tone and sound pretty much the same according to me. Torn contains no surprises… Does it mean that Tom S. Englund and his bandmates have produced an average album? I don’t think so. Torn just misses some spicy elements that could make it a very good metal album. I think it’s not as good at Monday Morning Apocalypse. That’s pretty much what I have to say about it. I guess I’ll learn to appreciate Torn with further listenings. But at this moment, I’ll give it a rate of 7,5/10. And I’ll specify that the good songs on the album are probably Broken Wings, Fail, Numb and These Scars (pretty good).

Well, the kings of trash metal are back my friends. Metallica are making an impressive comeback to the sound that made them famous in the 80’s with Death Magnetic. And believe me, they deserved to offer something good to their fans after the catastrophic St-Anger released in 2003. But here we are with a brand new album that deserves some respect. Death Magnetic is quite impressive.

Apart from the song titled The End Of The Line that has a “Load/Reload” vibe at its beginning, the rest of the songs of the album definitely sound like the 80’s era. This is pure trash metal my friends: fast tempo, aggressive lyrics, heavy riffs. We feel like we are back to the Master Of Puppets. All the songs rock but The Unforgiven III rocks a bit less. Nothing of that songs reminds us of the original one found on the Black album.

So trash metal fans can be happy: Metallica are back in the line that they should have never left. The 90’s and 00’s have been disastrous for a few bands, Metallica are no exception. But they are now back on track with Death Magnetic. It is worth 9/10. The best songs included in there are the first five. The rest are good too but less to be remembered.

Haaaaaaa!!! Iced Earth got its voice back! Matt Barlow is back home taking the place of Tim “Ripper” Owens that had replaced him as the lead signer of the group 7 years ago. Owens was OK but Iced Earth is definitively at its best with Barlow at the mike.

So here is the new CD entitled The Crucible Of Man, a follow-up to Framing Armageddon that was released earlier this year. Both albums cover the same storyline about the “Wicked”, a character that was created in the Something Wicked That Way Comes album back in 1998. The Crucible Of Man definitely continues where Framing Armageddon left. The same tone and atmosphere reign on the album, only the voice changes. The melodies are also present but maybe not quite as good as on Framing. But Crucible concludes the storyline in a fashionly way. John Schaffer’s (the lead-guitarist, music composer and mainman of Iced Earth) lyrics are quite sinister on Crucible. This contributes a lot to the album where the music is not as intense as on other Iced Earth albums.

The Crucible of Man is yet another excellent release of the Florida-based metal group. Not their finest but very good indeed. And thanks god Matt is back!!! I give it a 8/10 rate. The best songs on the album, according to me, are Behold The Wicked Child, A Gift Or A Curse, I Walk Alone and Come What May.

There are some of these albums that you know, at the first listening, that you will just never like them. In my case, Alice Cooper’s last effort Along Came a Spider falls into this category. After having listened to it once, I was already going to give it a 1/10 rate but after a few more listenings, my appreciation can now be measured at… 4/10.

I am not a hardcore Alice Cooper fan but I like a few of his classic songs (I’m Eighteen, School’s Out, Poison, No More Mr Nice Guy, etc.). I had read good reviews of Along Came a Spider on the web so I decided to give it a try. Error! I wasted 15 bucks!

I just cannot find any song on this album that I really appreciate, and that no matter how often I listen to it. I could say that Vengeance Is Mine, Wrapped In Silk and I Am The Spider are OK, but not that much. True fans of Alice Cooper will probably say that this is the sound and this concept album is a masterpiece. But for me, a metal album has to include some killer riffs and drum beats, one or more arena anthems and stuff like that. Along Came a Spider is far from containing these magic ingredients. This album is more like a joke to me, it is some kind of theatrical play put on disc. What more can I say. I expected more I guess…

Did the bell of retirement ring for Mr Cooper? I can’t say… But I can say that this album is weird and that Alice can produce more enjoyable music. So I’ll give it a 4/10 score, and this is mainly because the album’s interior booklet is really well done.

Here’s my first CD review on cynyx.com. And to start this tradition (that existed on my previous website), I am reviewing Dragonforce’s last effort titled Ultra Beatdown.

Dragonforce was almost unknown to the majority of the population before Guitar Hero III was issued on the market. Now every Guitar Hero fan knows their song Through The Fire And Flames. And everybody now knows what kind of music to expect from Dragonforce: pretty fast power metal highly inspired by video game music. That’s exactly what you’ll find on Ultra Beatdown: the same kind of music that was found on Inhuman Rampage (Dragonforce’s previous effort). This album is definitely a continuity of the last one. The thing that differs is that the songs a bit longer and that more acoustic instruments are used in the melodies. But the terribly-fast-pace tempo still rules on this new album.

Ultra Beatdown offers no suprises for the common Dragonforce fan. For the people who are curious to “take an ear” at this kind of music, prepare to be “hurricaned”. Dragonforce’s music is quite rough on the nervous system! I am still trying to figure out how a drummer can drum so fast… Impressive, that’s the least I can say! And by the way, don’t be surprised to hear so many 8-bit-Nintendo-game sounds in the songs, it is wanted like that…

I rate this album at 8/10 as it is a great follow-up to Inhuman Rampage. The songs The Last Journey Home and Inside The Winter Storm are pretty good.