Level 10 - Chapter One

Published January 27 2015

*=Staff's pick	Cry No More Soul Of A Warrior When The Nighttime Comes* One Way Street Blasphemy Last Man On Earth In For The Kill* Voice Of The Wilderness All Hope Is Gone Demonized* The Soul Is Eternal Forevermore*

Genre	Heavy Metal	Russell Allen	Vocals
Tracks	12	Roland Grapow	Guitar
Running time	55 Min.	Alex Beyrodt	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Records	Mat Sinner	Bass
Release	23 January 2015	Randy Black	Drums
Country	International	Alessandro Del Vecchio	Keyboard
Producer	Mat Sinner
Similar artists	---

Another project in the vast jungle of new heavy metal projects. This time we have German bass player, songwriter and producer Mat Sinner [Primal Fear, Sinner] and American vocalist Russell Allen [Symphony X, Adrenaline Mob, Allen/Lande] putting their magic structures together and release an album as the highly international unit Level 10.

Although there are many Primal Fear members involved with this album, as its songwriting credits partly also goes to its guitarist Magnus Karlsson and its vocalist Ralf Scheepers and the guitars are partly played by Alex Beyrodt and the band's former drummer Randy Black is delivering his goods, the songs mainly don't have much in common with that band actually. Add guitarist Roland Grapow [Masterplan, formerly of Helloween], whom recently released an album with Serious Black, and keyboard player Alessandro Del Vecchio [Hardline] and this is really a fine combination of musicians.

What we have here musically is more or less an easy going heavy metal experience with strong influences of traditional hard rock. The riffing is kinda melodic in its nature, but the overall music is more set to a form a groovy atmosphere around Russell Allen's powerful appearance. His voice is definitely a ruling factor and even if the songs aren't totally enthralling and don't come out heavy punching enough, Allen's voice does.

Most of the disc's material is definitely good, but I don't get those streams of excitement rushing through my veins when I listen to it. The album somehow doesn't make any greater impressions on me at the end of the day, which really is the exact opposite of what I thought before listening to this one for the first time. I feel that the songs basically have huge potential to come out strong, but somewhere along the road this constellation kind of loses the ability to really take the songs to the top floor.

I really don't know why I don't fall in love with this record, because supposedly I believe that I should and perhaps you should give it a go anyway, since 6 chalices is a rather fine outcome nevertheless.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	6	7	8	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe