Impellitteri - Eye Of The Hurricane (1997) [2008, Japanese VICP-64366]

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Impellitteri - Eye Of The Hurricane (1997) [2008, Japanese VICP-64366]

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Killer metal albums come once in a while and when I mean killer I refer to those like Paintkiller, Black Hand Inn, The Gathering, Imaginations from the Other Side and some others. Those recordings are almost flawless. They display metal at its best.

Chris Impelliteri is nothing but an astonishing guitar player ala Yngwie whose skills lie in the speed and slashing scales he is able to perform, not to mention his excellent composing abilities. And guess who the singer is here: Rob Rock, who possesses one of the most impressive voices among metal community.

With EOTH we get an almost perfect album except for some little things I will detail further. The album opens with the title track and I must say it is an astonishing song, full of power, excellent vocals, strong riffing and a kick ass guitar solo. This is a perfect way to open such metal feast. The structure for Shed your blood and Fuel for the fire are very similar. Race into the Light is the first instrumental and is masterfully accompanied by synthesizers. The scales are directly pulled from classical music. Bleed in silence is another mid tempo song with strong riffing and excellent choruses. By the way, 90% of the album is mid tempo, you don’t get fast paced songs, and the other 10% are instrumentals and ballads. On and On is an acoustic ballad and pretty boring to me. I find Everything is You as the weak point within the album, not that it is bad but it is not at the same level as the previous ones. Halloween is the second instrumental and again we get a good display or virtuosity with keyboards spiced hooks but I like the previous instrumental even more fue to its complexity. and here is where the weakness of the album shows up to me. How come that an outstanding metal piece closes with a ballad? I don’t know about you, maybe I am being too obnoxious but I’d expect either the fastest song or a killer track that would blow you up and this is not the case. Not that the ballad is bad, I mean, it is a power ballad with a strong and fast guitar solo and high tones in the vocals. I would have put it before the end but it was Impelliteri’s choice. I don’t understand why if Chris is a killer guitar player capable of killer heavy metal he had to include ballads. Why can’t they play 10 ripping metal songs just as Running Wild or some others taking out the ballads? I guess I am being too picky.

I’d dare to say too that Crunch (next release) has a better structure but with this they managed to crown themselves as one of the best heavy metal bands around, very underrated thou because of the distribution problems and exposure but if you like powerful heavy metal that will leave you wanting more this is one of those gems you are looking for.

~ www.metal-archives.com