Band : Ten
Album title : Stormwarning
Label : Frontiers Records
Distributor : Rough Trade Benelux
Release Date : 18/02/2011
Release : CD

I must admit I’ve always liked Ten’s music.  It’s not what you’d call hard rock, but rather catchy mid-tempo AOR, but hey what’s wrong with that.
Over the past years they’ve had their fair share of trouble, with lots of line-up changes, even temporary disappearing from the scene, but with this album they’ve picked up where they left.

As on previous albums most of the material was written by singer Gary Hughes.  He got the aid of long time members John Helliwel on guitar and Paul Hodson on keyboards.  With Neil Fraser on lead guitars and Mark Summer ond bass the line-up was almost completed.  In came Mark Zonder (Fates Warning) on drums, and off they went.  Mixing and producing was done by none other than Dennis Ward (I won’t sum up the bands and/or projects he has been in already – he’s almost the house producer for Frontiers). As mentioned before all songs are to be situated in the mid tempo range.  And whereas you cannot say that Gary Hughes has a very powerful voice, he is able to produce a decent sound, putting the right accents on the right places, and, and this does it for me, he has a slightly bluesy undertone.
To top it all of the lyrics are extraordinary.  This is not an album for non-fluent English speakers, cause Gary uses phrases and that you wouldn’t expect on a rock album.

The artwork on the album was done by Luis Royo, whom people who like fantasy, will surely know.  He already did the artwork for the ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Babylon’ covers as a matter fact.

If you’re a fan of mid-tempo, AOR-ish songs, then do not hesitate and buy this album.

97/100

Erik Morren.