RUBIKON are an American Hard Rock group, but they are not your typical, generic Hard Rock squad. Stylistically, RUBIKON's sound is inspired by a multiple of genres, anywhere from the early 70's Psychedelic Rock to the late 80's Heavy Metal and it can definitely be heard throughout the band's fourth album, which is, interestingly enough, titled "The Record".

The album begins with a mellow acoustic guitar intro, which soon turns into the album's first song - a rather dull Country-styled track, titled "Broken Hearts". This track, unfortunately, serves as a reasonable perspective to what's to come in the remaining 45 minutes. As soon as the soft acoustic guitar tune ends, comes the most important segment of the track - a missed opportunity, given there is a painful lack of correlation between the backing instruments and the vocals. That becomes a recurrent problem in "The Record", which left me ruing that the rest of the album didn't go like that beautiful intro.

I could've written extensively about what I found positive in "The Record", as I usually do, however, that pleasure was brought and taken quicker than I could comprehend. In brief, what I can say is that the lead vocalist of RUBIKON has a great potential, but unfortunately, I personally find his talent overshadowed by the band's inability to tune along with his voice. In other parts, the guitar work is magnificent, but once again, lacks either ingenuity or correlation with the rest of the band. I'll give the band their deserved props with the album's eighth track, which is my pick for the album's highlight. Was it enough to be either memorable or more than enjoyable for a single listen? Unfortunately, not.

To add more fuel to the fire, I'm not exactly sure who's the band's target audience are; it seems like the majority of the tracks on "The Record" are all over the place, with the band's output not exactly fitting in one style nor another. I would normally say that the ability of a band to juggle between styles is a tasteful matter, but RUBIKON just couldn't prove me that with this album. It is truly "all over the place", in the worst sense possible. For the band's fifth album, I look forward for changes to be made, because the bunch are not at all terrible musicians.