Talisman - Cats And Dogs

*=Staff's pick	Skin On Skin Break It Down In Make Believe Love Will Come Again Outta My Way Friends To Stranger Sorry Trapped M.O.M. Wherever, Whenever, Whatever Lost In The Wasteland Hell In Paradise

Genre	Melodic Hard Rock	Jeff Scott Soto	Vocals
Tracks	12	Fredrik Åkesson	Guitar
Runningtime	56 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Records	Marcel Jacob	Bass
Release	12 May 2003	Jamie Borger	Drums
Country	Sweden/USA	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Humanimal, Human Clay

It doesn't matter in which surrounding you find singer Jeff Scott Soto and bassplayer Marcel Jacob, both formerly with Yngwie Malmsteen. Regardless if it's Talisman, Human Clay or Humanimal they are playing in at the moment you can expect more or less the same music from all of the three bands, but for now it's the sixth studioalbum by Talisman we're dealing with.

On Cats And Dogs we're still talking about catchy and melodic hardrock, but this time the sound is a little bit rougher and with a more raw sense to it. Yet the melodic songs where the chorus is like "the hammer on the nail" can still be found together with other typical Talisman elements such as multiple vocal-lines in the chorus and the explicit bassplaying. Jeff Scott Soto is without a doubt one of the best vocalists and when he and the phenomenal bassplayer Marcel Jacob stir something together you rarely get disappointed, and even if not all of the twelve tunes on the album are topnotch, they are still within the framework of what is Talisman.

This is melodic hardrock at its finest, and Cats And Dogs is definitely one of the band's better albums, perhaps even the best Talisman album at this point.