Making their debut in 2015, the (mostly) European metal band Level 10 features a few familiar faces. While not quite stepping up to the true supergroup mantle, with its coming together of members from Symphony X, Masterplan, Primal Fear and Sinner, the band includes personnel that should be more than familiar to hard rock fans.
Tag Archives: hard rock
Yngwie Malmsteen box set imminent
February 2015 sees the release of ‘Now Your Ships Are Burned’, a four CD anthology of work recorded by Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen. The set covers his years with Polydor Records from 1984-1990.
The set will be a domestic budget priced reissue of the previously Japanese only collection which included the first six albums. Like similar sets from Saxon (‘The Carrere Years’) and Tangerine Dream (‘The Virgin Years’), the length of the albums is such that six releases can easily be condensed into a 4CD package.
RATED X – Rated X
Put together at the suggestion of Frontiers Records as a classic rock vehicle to display the talents of legendary rock vocalist Joe Lynn Turner, Rated X is a heavy rock supergroup whose sound is – somewhat unsurprisingly – heavily indebted to Rainbow and mid-80s Deep Purple. As an ex-member of Rainbow, Turner is one of a few who can lay claim to this classic rock sound as being partly his own. Perhaps more importantly, he’s also one of a few veteran rock singers who’s still capable of lending some decent vocal chops to most projects when called upon to do so. Just one listen to the Sunstorm albums confirms his place as one of the all-time greats, so the record label’s faith in his abilities – even at the age of 63 at the time of this band’s formation – is justified.
X-DRIVE – Get Your Rock On
Spearheaded by unknown guitarist Jeremy Brunner, X-Drive is a hard rock project that celebrates 80s melodic rock in a particularly unashamed and brazen fashion. Joining Brunner on this particular journey are ex-White Lion bassist James Lomenzo, Montrose vocalist Keith St. John and Midline drummer Fred Fischer. They say you can’t always judge a book by the cover, but this band’s general style should be obvious after one look at their dubious choice of album sleeve. It’s not as bad as Montrose’s staggeringly awful ‘Jump On It’ – a sleeve that clearly inspired the end result – but it’s pretty unnecessary.
W.A.S.P. – The Headless Children
After the release of three studio albums and a live record, by 1988 US shock-rockers W.A.S.P. had gained a loyal fan-base. However, thanks to their potentially objectionable songs and frontman Blackie Lawless’s larger-than-life attitude, the band had even more detractors. Since their stage show featured raw meat, torture racks and naked women and their albums were filled with more profanity and sexist material than most bands had dared to commit to plastic by that point on the time line of hard rock history, they made life-long enemies with Tipper Gore and her self-righteous band of moral guardians in the US.