Shakra - Power Ride

*=Staff's pick	Power Ride Why Don't You Call Me* Watching You* The Sun Will Shine* Out in The Rain In Your Eyes* Get It All Out A Dollar Too Much* She's My Pride* Tell Me The Way Back Home Too Close Take My Hand

Genre	Heavy Metal	Pete Wiedmer	Vocals
Tracks	13	Thom Blunier	Guitar
Runningtime	48 Min.	Thomas Muster	Guitar
Label	Point Music	Oli Linder	Bass
Release	14 Sept. 2001	Roger Tanner	Drums
Country	Schweiz	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Bonfire, Gotthard

After two previous fullength albums and one livecd the Swiss quintet Shakra are back with a new release. Playing their melodic rock somewhere in between the more soft side of simple hard rock and metal, they are delivering a really good album here.

The first thing I have to mention is the incredible production. This is one of the best produced music cd's I have heard in my days. The sound is crystal clear with a depth and power I have seldom heard before when it comes to this kind of music. And when I on top of that are reading that the band has produced the album all by themselves in a studio in their homecountry (that in all honesty hasn't made themselves a name for a bundle of great bands with killer productions), it's really impressive and almost worth an extra half point just for that fact.

If you are a person that needs pounding double bassdrums through a whole record to enjoy it, then this is probably nothing for you. It goes pretty much in mid-tempo all along, but with such killer refrains and sharp riffs that it is impossible to not be hooked on this.

It could be described as a kind of arenarock, but with much, much more depth and heaviness and quite a bit of flirting with the powerful side of metal. The verse riffs are killer sharp and very heavy, somewhere in the realms of today's Pretty Maids and equal bands, it's more the choruses that fall into the arena rock-category.

The album is straight through very good without any weak moments, but instead solid and characteristic songs containing pretty much everything a really good album should have.
Only one ballad out of 13 songs, the closing one, which is something I personally find really good and acceptable. When it comes to this kind of bands you often get an album with 20-25 % ballads, but not in this case. Shakra are concentrating on the rockin' and rolling.

The actual music style Shakra are performing we hear 13 bands on a dozen that play, but Shakra do it in a very personal way. What keep coming back to me are the heavy guitars and the powerful refrains, which are brilliant and all have their unique touch to them.

I am looking forward to more from this band and this will be very interesting to follow, and I can strongly recommend this album to you who want to hear well played, catchy but yet heavy good hard rock/metal. We have heard this before, of course - nothing is really new under the sun these days - but we have seldom heard it being done this well.