Right before leaving SYMPHORCE, the ex-FREEDOM CALL guitar player Cedric Dupont teamed-up with German vocalist Steffen Lauth in order to form DOWNSPIRIT: A more contemporary Metal band, a side project that now has turned as his main business affair. His idea was to create something that sounds more American than German, a band that sounds more like BLACK LABEL SOCIETY than HELLOWEEN. I think that you probably got the idea by now.

He  succeed in this particular attempt, but the first album "Point Of Origin", also released by Metalville Records, of 2010 wasn't received really well by the critics, though I personnaly found it interesting in many ways. Maybe the fact that they labeled themselves as a "Blues meets Metal" act was disturbing in terms of marketing and destabilizing music-wise, because they are everything except that particular indigent music mix.

Now it's time for "Try n°2"...Now, they call their music "Modern Hard Bitchin' Rock" and this time I think that they hit bull's eye. Mixing ALTER BRIDGE / GODSMACK down-tuned guitars with some more rigorous German riffing successfully along with some spices of 80s Hard Rock melodies , this whole stuff packaged in a "lot of bucks- right in your face prod" at the end it sounds near stuff like SHOTGUN REVOLUTION or THE NEW BLACK yet only better.

The presence of some additional slide-guitars, harmonicas & banjos gimmicks, are effective ways to color the music as Southern Red-Neck Metal, but in the end except for "Human Gift", that sounds pretty much like SHINEDOWN / NICKLEBACK, the music it's a clever amalgam of modern Melodic Metal with quick alternate flavor from both Euro and U.S. scenes but without falling into the Post-Grunge trap. Fortunately, DOWNSPIRIT escaped from those formulaic generics thanks to the wide enough structures of the songs and thanks to the richness of the manly vocals provided by Mr.Lauth: From harsh to clear the whole spectrum is displayed here nicely. To close the album perfectly the ROXETTE cover-song "The Look" is very well updated and boosted in the same way as the rest, with a lot of balls.