Human Fortress is a melodic power metal band from Germany. It all started in 1997 when guitarists Torsten Wolf and Volker Trost joined with bassist Pablo J. Tammen to form a band called Timezone. Shortly after recording a demo, the collaboration ended.
Would you believe it ? This guy has been in the music business for over 30 years, and now Jon Oliva is releasing his first ever solo album. How this record or rather the songs on it originated, I’ll try to tall you in a few words.
Since its beginnings in 2001-2002, Masterplan seems to have had it’s ups and downs. Founded by former Helloween members Roland Grapow and Uli Kusch who in the beginning were joined with master vocalist Jorn Lande. A bright future seemed to lay ahead of them, as their first album was highly successful, followed by an equally successfully second album ‘Aeronautics’.
Formed in 1997, Chicago based Rock band Soil rose and took over that particular scene. After their first independent release, the band was the first rock group signed by the legendary Clive Davis to J Records. The band achieved mainstream success with their major label debut "Scars" in 2001. The band did have some trouble with their line up until reuniting with their original vocalist Ryan McCombs in October 2011.
Although this band has been a favourite Industrial Metal act of mine since their 1992 hit album Psalm 69: The Way To Succeed And the Way To Suck Eggs, and in spite of the fact that I only once was given the honour of reviewing an album by the band, I still acquired most of he band's (regular) studio albums (including the first two completely Dance-geared recordings).
This is their fifth studio album since this Swedish band was formed in 2004. And as before they’ve made a fine album. Not that it brings anything new to us. Far from that. This album, as were their previous albums, is chock full of stereotypes and clichés of the genre.
Actually their music can best be described as a mix of Manowar, Iron Maiden, Sabaton, Judas Priest, and maybe I could name a few others.
If you buy the limited edition digipak of this album you not only get the CD, but a DVD as well, recorded at Wacken in 2010, who also contains some bonus tracks and a video. But I only received the CD.
