Masterplan - Masterplan

*=Staff's pick	Spirit Never Die* Enlighten Me Kind Hearted Light* Crystal Night Soulburn* Heroes* Sail On Into The Light Crawling From Hell* Bleeding Eyes When Love Comes Close

Genre	Heavy Metal	Jorn Lande	Vocals
Tracks	11	Roland Grapow	Guitar
Runningtime	62 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	Jan S. Eckert	Bass
Release	20 Jan. 2003	Uli Kusch	Drums
Country	Germany	Axel Mackenrott	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

This is the debutalbum from the newly formed constellation consisting of Roland Grapow, Uli Kusch (ex-Helloween), Jorn Lande (Jorn, Millenium, Ark), Jan-S. eckert (ex-Iron Savior), and previously unknown Mackenrott on keyboard - and it sure is one hell of debut. Melodic heavy metal of the best kind which feels like a fresh breeze in the scene of today, since it's - if not really original - very interesting. This is one of the few albums where I find the fact that it's varied a good thing, since it fits so well in and are building up an extremely good atmosphere along the way. We get the basic metal, the epic stuff, the heavy riffs and the midtempo tunes - all very well performed by these musicians that I don't think need any complementary introduction.

Singer Lande has a big part in the success of this splendid release, since the man has an incredibly good and powerful voice, which I think everyone that is familiar with his previous work can agree on. His vocal efforts really blows me away. This is not an orgy in either double bassdrums, nor swirling solos by Mr. Grapow, which would be easy to suspect considering his background. This is in fact a contrast to Helloween with their light and happy singalongharmonies, so don't expect anything of that kind here. There are certain elements and touches of Helloween in some intros and bridges here, so I guess he can't really let go of his roots. Grapow and Kusch once again prove that they are very skilled songwriters, and combined with a voice like this it can't go wrong, and this looks highly interesting for the future when it starts off like this.

The songs on this album are mostly in the midtempostyle of the faster kind - for example Sail On, Kind Hearted Light, Spirit Never Die, Heroes, and Crawling From Hell are straight ahead tracks with brilliant leads and harmonies and choruses that are something extra, and the tracks that has a bit slower approach still have very strong refrains and great guitarriffs. The amount of ballads manage to stay just below the point of what is acceptable, and the slower, more based on heaviness songs, contains enough melody and harmony to make this album deserve this high amount of chalices.

Produced by Andy Sneap, this album garantuees extremely thick and powerful sound which hits you like a brick in the face, and the mixing and mastering that took place at the Finnvox Studios in Helsinki, Finland just adds the last pieces of the perfection. It's a very heavy, powerful production with a mature sound and songwriting. Yet it's very melodic and not at all complicated - instead this is plain, good heavy metal when it's at it's best, and it was a long time since I got this positivly surprised by a metalalbum.

A very good buy for you who are in search of something new, fresh, interesting and of course very metal. Perhaps one of the better albums of 2003.

See also review of: PumpKings , Novum Initium , Aeronautics

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8,5	9	8,5

Summary
8,5 chalices of 10 - Tommy