Rock and Metal. When combined, these two genres can be pretty insane, and the USA is one country, which can blend these two quite well. Although there were some examples I heard last year where it failed rather badly, as I got some mediocre ones as well as some good ones to review, so will it be the same for this year? I'll just have to wait and see, I suppose. Anyway, on with todays review and the band featured are a Hard Rock & Heavy Metal quintet from Portland, Oregon and their name is SPLINTERED THRONE and last month they release their debut CD "The Octagon" and that shall be the focus of this review.

Formed in 2006, SPLINTERED THRONE originally began as a band who have had a few line-up changes, have played all kinds of styles including Death Metal, Rock and even Pop music, as well as mixing things up for their live shows, by doing their own unique versions of Classic Rock and 1980's songs. They've even toured with the likes of LITA FORD, KAMELOT and PRIMAL FEAR among many others so they must have some talent if they have played with big names like that right? Let us find out if that is true.

I've never held anything against the Americans when it comes to Rock and Metal music, as they can produce some good stuff, but as a whole, I prefer European music but I do like it when the Americans get together with the Europeans to make music as more often than not, you can get something really special as a result of these two nations collaborating as one.

Back to the new SPLINTERED THRONE album now, and "The Octagon" is 10 tracks of Hard Rock, Heavy & Power Metal running in at roughly 50 minutes and if there's one thing which this album does not let your ears do, is rest as the moment one song ends, the next is immediately thrown at you so you get the general impression that the whole album was done in just one session. If that was the case, the musicians involved would be exhausted afterwards or maybe it's done through clever mixing. Whatever the case may be, I do like that sometimes with music being constantly thrown at me with each song playing back to back on a non-stop stream but only if the music is good because if it's dull and boring, I get bored very quickly and immediately switch it off to listen to something else that is good.

So do this band fall into that trap? The answer is a combination of both yes and no, as there are elements of it I do like, but others where I think it's okay but not great. Let's start positive to begin with and the things I like include the continual stream of music and the heavy melodies (mainly the guitars). The things I'm a bit unsure of include the lengths of a couple of songs as some run in at around 7 minutes but they sound longer, the production of the music is okay but not great, as the instruments could have been tuned and tweaked a bit better and lastly the vocal performance which is by no means bad as the singer does give it plenty of oomph, but I think the performance could have been a bit better.

Verdict time now and it's got off to a bit of a bumpy start for new American Rock and Metal music this year, but it was also the same for the Brits who improved with the next batch of promos I got so I have a feeling things will get better as we do have the debut album from SOTO to look forward to, so I will be looking forward to any new music I get from the USA but as for this album, it's okay but not great as there are bits of it which I do like and there are bits which do have potential but they need tweaking and fine tuning to improve it a bit.<