Here we are, about to review the first album for LYONEN titled "This Is Lyonen". LYONEN hails from Washington D.C., a one man project Tato started in 2017. Tato, who graduated in 2003 with an audio engineering degree with additional insight into the world of music, videos, and photography landed him the Promax BDA award doing promotional audio mixing for a T.V. station now is living out his dream of producing music. His influences are such bands as "IRON MAIDEN," "METALLICA", "HELLOWEEN", and "JOE SATRIANI", and is quoted in saying "I started playing in 1995, and I haven't stopped since".

The album starts us off with "Revelation", a fast paced, heavy chords, pounding percussion song with a definite influence of "IRON MAIDEN". A well wote song, with decent quality sound, full of heavy riffs, an awesome breakdown, and a decent solo. He does well with the production of it, and I dig the style.

The next song "Lyonen" starts off with a sort of "NIN" feel. I can hear the best of all his influences in his songs. Hard heavy riffs, screaming first solo, badass second solo, and good vocals. It's a look into his style growing up he makes his own, and touches on everyone of them in this track.

On to the next track, this one titled "No Borders," a sort of happy playful tune that almost makes me think of an old sailors hem done with a heavy metal tone. It's up, and down, violin parts and solo, catchy chorus, and very memorable you'll have that chorus stuck in your head for a while. A really cool, well performed flowing song. Good stuff!

So now we're onto the forth track "Nehme Die Sunde", an instrumental track with a little bit of everything in it. A really cool synthesizer part, hammering percussion throughout, and a really cool progressive riff, and a drum8 solo. I thought it was well written, and enjoyed listening to it. Even though there weren't any lyrics, the change in tone and progression made it a great song.

So far everythings been really good and now onto "I Am Not Wild". It starts off with a nice melodic intro, with a soft lead part flowing over the rhythm with some harmonics before going into the first verse. A softer song then we've heard to this point, but a really good song. It does speed up in tempo leadinging into a long fast solo, before back to the soft melodic outro to finish it off. My favorite song so far.

I'm going to jump ahead a bit to the eighth song "Hard To Destroy". The third instrumental on the album that has five of them, but this solo was my favorite. It reminded me of the classic "METALLICA" instrumentals of the past. Heavy chords, power metal riffs, a melodic breakdown, with a heavy lead riff before progressing back to thrash metal, and two really good solos with the second one comparable to "Kirk Hammet." Really good work.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this album. I believe it was all well written, composed, the songs were structured greatly, and this dude can jam! The production was done very well, the sound quality throughout was on point, and to think it's all from the mind of one man, it's badass! I think there's something here for everyone to enjoy!