Having first checked the band out on YouTube before sitting down to digest the album in full, I felt a little hesitation over this act. Two too old guys playing too old music. I can say that I'm a too old guy who plays too old music as well. But the music was exciting. A bit of Neoclassical guitar soloing, a bit of Blues shredding and Hard Rock riffing from Emil Norberg, Euro Metal style vocals courtesy of Doogie White (RAINBOW, MALMSTEEN). It seemed like a bit of a "throw it all at the wall" approach, but I was cautiously hopeful by the end of the track.

"Deal With the Preacher" is the album's unassuming opener. It's standard melodic Metal fare, distinguished by a very interesting guitar solo, but it isn't until track two "Raging Silence" that things start to hot up as the band proves that they can craft hook laden songs with big sing-along choruses. White's voice admittedly does struggle with some of the notes he is attempting here, but it's a top-notch bit of composition with a great vocal melody and another quality guitar solo.

"Wings of Angels" bounces along nicely, with a grooving guitar riff through the verses and another substantial chorus to get your teeth into. There's a bit of QUEEN like flair in the production of this one as well and it has multiple different styles of Metal going on as the song moves through various interludes.

If "Star Rider" is a deliberate tribute to MICHAEL JACKSON's "Smooth Criminal" then it is a stroke of genius, as seemingly being directly lifted from that track, the riff on this song is no way diminished by that. It's a great rock riff, and really gives this track a shot of vibrant familiarity. This track also features a completely tripped out and slightly incongruous keyboard solo, sounding like a church organist on LSD, that brings a big Progressive feel to it. Bags of fun.

Straight out of the WHITESNAKE school of pop-tinged Metal ballads comes "Hell Has No Fury" which sees White stretching his vocal abilities more successfully. Like most other tracks on this album, this song is familiar in style, but not at all predictable in construction. The band seem to constantly find surprising chord structures to turn to, tonal shifts and changes in atmosphere abound. This is exemplified in the track I mentioned at the outset of this review "Master of Illusion" which makes infinitely more sense in the context of the album where we now find it.

The band is in a much more bluesy mood on "Hallelujah Brother" which has a fast Rock 'n Roll aesthetic with Hammond Organ backing things up, this one is less adventurous in the writing, but Norberg has some exceptional soloing.  "Steeltown" achieves something almost unheard of in Heavy Metal, a dual keyboard and guitar solo that doesn't sound ridiculous. It's highly effective in fact, coming across like the music to a deranged circus act. It's not the only interesting part of the song either, which roars along like a juggernaut of ideas.  It's the biggest, most powerful weepy on the album and with a title like "Never Wrote a Love Song," (the actual main lyric is "I'll never write another love song" which would have been a much better name) I, the reviewer find myself in something of a quandary. As a writer I desperately want the song to be bad so that I can make the obvious joke and then bask in the satisfaction of it all, unfortunately it is darn good. Damn. A sweeping majestic ballad packed with shimmering classically inspired acoustics, haunting strings, and mournful backing vocals.

The violins make "Where Will You Run To" sound almost like it's going to be a Folk-Rock track at the start, but it quickly establishes itself as more of an 80s style straight Rocker with a touch more sophistication, although it does revisit the folk theme later. Like so much of the album's material, it has a very strong foot tapping chorus that will make you want to sing before we reach the album's final offering "We Don't Shoot Our Wounded". More of a straightforward fist pumping NWOBHM type track this is more like what I was expecting the whole album to sound like. That wouldn't have been a disaster by any means, but I am glad there was as much variety as there was. Still, this is a strong end to the album with meticulously planned backing vocals, and a few final blasts of Norberg's fluid soloing.

I think the production slightly lets the album down, it isn't bad, but the bass is a little lost in the mix and you can't hear the individual notes too well. Similarly, the drum recording isn't the greatest, the snare sound is a bit weak. Perhaps this is what you get when a guitarist and vocalist put an album together themselves. But aside from that, the rest of the instruments sound excellent, especially the keyboards and organs. The writing is bold throughout, never really settling on any one genre, but all under the general banner of Hard Rock. You never know where they are about to go at any given moment, with occasionally exhilarating results.