It was almost inevitable that THE SCINTILLA PROJECT were going to sound like SAXON. Sure, there are extra keyboards and the songs have more Prog in them, but with powerhouse vocalist BIFF BYFORD on board, the comparison just can't be avoided. And the Yorkshire Titans legions of fans will absolutely love this.

Inspired by the recent sci-fi movie 'Scintilla' (also known as 'The Hybrid' in some places), the band was born out of a mutual friendship between Byford and drummer Lionel Hicks, who also serves as the producer. Whether their efforts work in conjunction with the film remains to be seen, but taken purely in its own right it is an undeniably impressive album. One unremarkable closing track aside, the majority of it is classic Heavy Metal with plenty of fist pumping anthems and Wacken regulars will lap it up.

"Angels" for instance is excellent and could sit comfortably alongside any of the SAXON classics. At sixty-three, Byford is still a formidable presence and he lends a muscular heft to even the quieter moments. The same can be said for "Pariah", "Scintilla", "Beware The Children" and "The Damned And The Divine", all of which also feature some adrenalin pumping guitar work courtesy of ANDY SNEAP.

Scattered throughout are samples of dialogue from the film which help to maintain the sci-fi theme and distinguish this from other similar records. There are mentions of asteroids, alien DNA and old Soviet bunkers and it all gets gloriously geeky. This is not a cool album by any means, if anything it's more nerdy than a date-less Saturday night playing Space Crusade, but it's brilliant fun nonetheless.

Truth be told, the film itself looks a bit pants. It's something to do with mercenaries battling alien horrors underground and the trailer on Youtube is utter crap, but "The Hybrid" is a hammy delight. And face it, sometimes you want to spend a weekend playing board games and not talking to girls...