Biss - Xtension

Published Nov. 04 2006

*=Staff's pick	Run For Your Life V Card Always* Shout It Out* Barracuda Eagle Born To Ride Blood On Sand Train Of Thoughts Catch 22

Genre	Hard Rock	Marc Storace	Vocals
Tracks	10	Ralf Heyne	Guitar
Runningtime	42 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	AOR Heaven	Lars Bilke	Bass
Release	17 Nov. 2006	Carsten Witte	Drums
Country	Germany	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Krokus, Bonfire, Victory

The German outfit Biss is back with their fourth album and the second one with the Krokus shouter Marc Storace behind the microphone. Biss is the brainchild of guitarist Ralf Heyne who previously paid his duties in bands like Mad Max and Tanner. The predecessor entitled Face Off received quite good reviews here and there but apart from having the great taste to include a cover of the Icon classic Raise The Hammer the album didn't do that much for me personally.

Xtension could be described as a natural follower to Face Off and you won't find anything new here. Well executed guitar based hard rock with melodies in the front room but apart from a few highlights, such as the great Shout It Out, the song writing is quite poor when it comes to the melodies. The guitar work however is quite good, nothing special or groundbreaking but they push the quality level up to a respectable level. The downside of the songs is often the vocal melodies which are quite lame and uninspiring. As always with an album from this band they have included a cover but this time it isn't as interesting as the last time since Heart's Barracuda already has been covered by several acts. When their version also is very close to the original this inclusion seems kind of pointless to me.

Despite my criticism above I must point out that this product has some quality due to the fact the musicians involved are very skilled in what they are doing and as a band they are a very tight. It is in the song writing department they fail and this is something they have to work on in the future otherwise I'm afraid that the impact of Biss in the hard rock community will be very small.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
6	7	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Hawk