Q5 - Steel The Light

*=Staff's pick	Missing In Action* Lonely Lady Steel The Light* Pull The Trigger* Ain't No Way To Treat A Lady In The Night Come And Gone Rock On Teenage Runaway*

Genre	Heavy Metal	Jonathan K.	Vocals
Tracks	9	Floyd Rose	Guitar
Runningtime	42 Min.	Rick Pierce	Guitar
Label	Albatross	Evan Sheeley	Bass
Release	1984	Gary Thompson	Drums
Country	USA	Evan Sheeley	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

This US group was formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1983 by the innovative guitarist Floyd Rose. He is otherwise best known for being the inventor of the locking tremelo system, the now indispensable device that ensures the guitar stays in tune even after the heaviest of tremelo use.

This is the typical and simple american style of hard rock, but for being released so early I think it's pretty heavy after the circumstances. It goes up and down, however - the heavier songs have strong, melodic compositions and are heavy with nice riffs but there are parts that are too weak and than it's pretty mediocre. It tend to be a little too american-slimy from time to time. At the time, there were a lot of similar cd's in the same style released so it's understandable that this perhaps passed pretty unnoticed. I think the album and their style stand out a bit from the rest, though, mainly because of the vocals and the plain, good old metal riffs.

The production is good and fat, and gives that extra needed for the nice riffs. The vocals are very good and have that raspy, yelling touch over them and rise this album over many others in the same genre.

This is perhaps not an album of great musical skills, but it sure has a lot of nostalgic value and it fits perfectly for a party when both the "feel-good" mood has to be there as well as good music.
Without any doubt the album still stands to this day. You might be in for a pleasant surprise if you check this album out.

For the interested ones: It could be advicable to check out the band TKO also, since it included most members of Q5.

The group fell apart in 1987 after having released 2 albums. (When The Mirror Cracks - 1986)

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	9	7
Nostalgiafactor
8
Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tommy