This is a strange one. I heard the album for the first time on a listening post in a record store and thought that the mighty metal sound was spoilt a bit by the occasionally scratchy vocals. I thought that this sounded like someone whose voice has only just broken. You know, not quite singing in the melodic higher octaves like RJ Dio, and not shouty/gruff enough to be a Scandinavian band. I couldn't quite get my head around it. And now I find it's a 15 year old kid who is doing the honours. Blimey o'Reilly! Who'd have thought it?
So it's important to get any pre-conceived ideas out of your heads about whether or not kids can rock or not, because this lot certainly can. I suppose a lot of the credit has to go to the producer Johnny K, who has built a huge sounding album here, that emphasises the frighteningly good guitar work and pounding rhythms. Sure the lyrics are cliched, and quite frankly daft in some cases - yeah you're 15 and you want to "live fast die young" . No you don't, at least not the second bit, and eventually the album proves to be a couple of quality songs short of 5 stars but even so, this is an astonishing debut!
