| CD REVIEW Crash The System |
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Band : Crash The System Renowned drummer (check Mind’s Eye, The Murder Of My Sweet, etc, etc)/producer Daniel Flores and songwriter Sören Kronqvist (a one-time Finnish 400m hurdle champion, he’s already co-written material for the likes of House Of Lords, Michael Bormann, CCRock, and 250kg kärlek) had known each other for a long time since, when in the Fall of 2008 they decided upon doing a musical project together! And thanks to Flores’ extensive background in the Swedish/ Scandinavian music scene, the duo was able to attract some of the finest singers from “Up North” for a contribution to their album. Check: Göran Edman (formerly with Yngwie Malmsteen, but also John Norum, Brazen Abbot, and many more…does lead vocals on 4 tracks). Check: Mats Levén (also a former Malmsteen singer, and many other projects including Infinite Mass…lead singer on 2 tracks). Check: Thomas Vikstrom (ex-Talk Of The Town, ex-Candlemass, participated in many other projects and to other band’s albums as backing singer…lead vocalist on 5 tracks). Check: Björn Jansson (ex-Ride The Sky, Tears Of Anger, and more…lead singer on 2 tracks). From his own band The Murder Of My Sweet, he invited singer Angelica Rylin to perform additional backing vocals, Daniel Palmqvist for some additional guitars, and Andreas Lindahl for some additional keyboards. Other guests were Johan Niemann (of Mind’s Eye & Murder My Sweet, among others) and Manuel Lewys (of Machinery, Elwood, etc), all performing additional guitar. Additional, because otherwize Flores and Kronqvist divided all bass, the other keyboard parts, and guitar (rhythm for the latter, leads for the first), with Flores evidently performing all drums and also doing quite a bit of backing vocals. Now it so happens that normally I wouldn’t even be reviewing any Frontiers albums anymore (the addition of a couple of reviewers to the Concrete Web roster providing the opportunity to re-shift some of the work-load), but the collegue whom had made the original review had given it a rating of a mere one out of ten (and that for the beautiful art-work alone)…and hence his review was rejected! Quite rightly so, I’d say, because what we’ve got here is a classy album which displays a mixture of ‘80s Metal with influences of modern Symphonic Metal, Hard Rock, and AOR. Catchy melodies with great lead vocals and even nicer harmonic vocal backings. To convince yourself of this project’s qualities, the label posted samples of 3 of the 13 songs on the album at the multimedia section of their website (frontiers.it). The guys do better themselves, having opened a MySpace page (myspace.com/crashthesystemproject), where you can find no less than 4 full-length tracks! What with the participants in this project coming from slightly different areas in musicmaking, CTS’s album will be able to please a broad range of music fans. What with my own work-load being what it is, I’ve only beeen able to give the album a couple (literally) of listening sessions, and what I heard pleased me enough to give it the underlaying rating! Because I haven’t had time to really have it sink in, that’s the rating it’ll have to do with! I dó hope I can listen to the album a couple of times more this year, though (wishful thinking…whom am I kidding anyway?) 88/100 Tony. |