Eye to Eye

Wow! Going through Ralf Scheepers history in the metal scene, I always thought he kind of overdid what he was always trying to get. He in a sense, left and was basically kicked out of Gamma Ray (it was done in modesty) because of his living quaters being too far apart from the rest of the band and the recording studio. During this time, Ralf auditioned to take Rob Halford's place as Judas Priest's new vocalist at the time, but failed. Guess what he then goes out to do? Creates the band Primal Fear, which I honestly don't think is too bad, but they've definitely put out a few albums here and there that are almost clones of Priest works (good, but still). But guess what? Ralf was attempting to mimic them back in the day with this band as well. And well, here it just doesn't work out well at all. This is just horrible.

Ralf Scheepers manages to sound pretty much just like Halford, but with maybe a different German-esqe accent to his voice or something, and his actual voice tends to be just a bit higher than Halford's. I absolutely couldn't stand Scheepers when he was in Gamma Ray, but he just didn't blend well with their music. In both this, and Primal Fear his vocals are pretty good. No complaints here, but because of the similarities it just helps it all add up to the bigger equation here.

This album is just boring. It sounds absolutely WAY too much like early Judas Priest (Stained Glass - British Steel mainly). It just sounds completely uninspired and lifeless. What's worse is even some of the songs here tend to sound almost too similar. See "Highway Knights" and then "Let it Rock". Seems like they just changed some lyrics there, switched around the riffs a bit and gave it a new song title. I see a lot of Accept's Balls to the Wall influence here and again, it just sounds too similar like bad remixes, and the chorus's completely fail in comparison to Udo's great chants. Without the balls basically. No songs really break boundaries here, and the majority of the tracks here aren't too fast, epic, or anything. There was really no memorable track here for me. Its not unbearable, but I seriously can't see myself ever wanting to go back to this one.

If Ralf Scheepers is your hero, or you think Primal Fear is the greatest band in the world, then this is definitely something to look into. Other than that I really can't recommend this at all. I'm hardly critical when bands sound similar to others (happens a lot in the Euro-Power scene, which I quite enjoy), but this just sounds TOO similar to the point of annoyance. Completely empty and like a bad uninspired rehash of Accept and Judas Priest stuff.