Ten – Illuminati

5/10

This english band has done some really exciting stuff during the years in the vein of melodic hard rock like “Spellbound”, “Stormwarning” and “The Twilight Chronicles” as highlights with the singer and mastermind Gary Hughes
behind the wheels. The first single of the album, the track “Jericho”, that was released in September 19 didn’t impress me though.

Now I have the entire album available so let’s see how the rest of the album is.

It starts with a melodic epic and suprisingly heavy song (“Be As You Are Forever”) with some irish influences just like they use to have on some tracks on “Spellbound”, and I like that. “Wieldshield” is another song that would have fit on that album, a battlesong in the same style as “Fear the Force” (one of my all time favourite songs)which is not that majestic but quite good anyway.

The rest of the album includes decent songs but nothing really grabs me here except “Rosetta Stone” which is a nice ballad. I believe they were trying to make a more epic album this time but I think the production is quite weak and sometimes it also gets too cheesy. I like the fact though that this doesn’t sound like a regular album in this genre but after the opening tracks I was hoping for a new album like “Spellbound” but that didn’t happen this time.

Artist: Ten
Title: Illuminati
Label: Frontiers Records
Date of release: 9 November 2018
Rating: 5/10
Stand out track: Be As You Are Forever