Time for a another blast from the past in a series of "In case you missed 'em" releases.Avantasia is a group I had never heard of until I got the cd "The Scarecrow" to review a few years back. It is the brainchild of EDGUY singer Tobias Sammet. On this 2008 release Tobias handles vocals and bass guitar, Sascha Paeth handles guitars and Eric Singer of KISS rocks the drums. The release also features
Thought I would pass along a few snippets of reviews from my latest release. To read the full reviews and listen to soundclips, go to www.johnnylokkeband.com/promises.html!"Promises and Lies opens up with "Accident of One," and I must say it fits perfectly as track 1. From the first riff the listener knows exactly what to expect from this album and will not be disappointed throughout. Marching rif
When I first discovered the Fozzy album "Happenstance" and heard the back story, I was amused and thought it wasn't half bad. I had no idea who Chris Jericho was at the time, but thought he was pretty good at marketing and not a bad singer either. I had pretty much forgot about them when I was given a copy of "All That Remains" and couldn't believe how far they had come. Rich Ward's guitar work wa
Wow. This is one powerful cd. Now I will preface this by saying I have always been a huge Helloween fan, both of the Kiske and Deris era's, so keep that in mind, but I think this is one of the best Helloween cd's of the last 10 years. Even though I really enjoyed releases like "The Dark Ride" and "Gambling with the Devil" I felt like a few of their cuts were predictible. This release finds the ban
For those of you that don't know it...ACCEPT IS BACK!!!! "Blood of the Nations" is one of the best metal releases of 2010 (maybe my favorite) as well as one of the best ACCEPT releases of their career. This cd Would have made a great follow-up to "Balls to the Wall" and "Metal Heart". Very polished, well-written, and catchy tunes make this a stand-out cd and Wolf and the boys are in fine form. For
The 80s band "Steeler" that introduced guitar legend Yngwie Malmsteen to the world have just released a cd called "American Metal - The Steeler Anthology". Now I have the original Steeler LP and love it (I still pull it out and fire up the turntable once in a while), but let me warn you about this cd. It is made up demo and live tracks (barring the new recording of Serenade done acoustically by Ro
I just received a promo copy of the new Warrant cd "Born Again". Now I wasn't a big Warrant fan in the 80s, as they were a bit too poppy for me, but I did dig the band Black N Blue, and now that Warrant have Jamie St. James (ex-Black N Blue) singing for them, I was anxious to check it out. I'm glad I did, as it takes the catchiness (is that a word?) of Warrant with the heavier edge and better (in
I was always a huge Loudness fan, and I have just about every release they have put out, so when I saw RockShocks I grabbed it. They took songs from the back catalog and re-recorded them. The good news is that songs like "In the Mirror" and "Crazy Night" have never been performed better. All the songs on the cd have a new heaviness and an edge that was missing on the original versions. The bad new
Dio is a god among men, we all know that. So when I got a copy of his cd "Holy Diver Live", I was ecstatic. This show captures Ronnie with his killer band of Simon Wright on drums, Rudy Sarzo on bass and Doug Aldrich on guitar tearing up the entire Holy Diver album. Just for good measure, the band throws in gems like "Gates of Babylon" (probably the jewel of the package), "Tarot Woman", "Long Live
Former Savatage vocalist Zak Stevens and his band Circle II Circle are back with a vengeance. I have always been a die-hard Savatage fan (and yes, Jon Oliva is really as cool in person as he seems), and when Zak formed his own band I was intrigued. I enjoyed the first two cd's quite a lot, but always felt like he was trying a bit to hard to ride on the Savatage bandwagon, almost as if he was afrai