Long Lost Pride

Wow - I cannot tell you how often I glanced at the player to double-check that I had not hit Shuffle by mistake, and one of my Masterplan CDs was playing. The resemblance is uncanny - really damn close to identical twins. Almost all tracks here could be inserted into a Masterplan CD, and the casual fan would never be any wiser.

For die-hard Jorn fans, I will allow that Bjorn Jansson's voice is not 'quite' as strong as Jorn's, but we are talking about a small difference - you really have to concentrate to tell them apart. The band as a whole sounds just like Masterplan in all aspects - very good, heavy power metal, with an emphasis on the guitar work, done here by Bob Katsionis. As a matter of fact, I would say that the only graspable difference is in the guitar soli, as Katsionis will impress with a few instances of shredding, which are largely absent from Masterplan's work.

Otherwise, for those of you hankering after more Masterplan material with Jorn doing the vocal duties, this is a must-have CD. For those who think copying another band is a crime, this is death-penalty stuff. I for one enjoy a good copy of good original material - and this CD is what they mean when they call something "carbon-copy".