Unfortunately this one offers up nothing exceptional, the disc either sounds like modern
Def Leppard (think "Euphoria" and "X") or it's a watered down ballad, and sometimes, it is a mixture of both! This is
Mysterell and the album is far from "Sensational", yet they went ahead and tagged it that anyway. A little too much wishful thinking was involved in that misfired decision, perhaps.
Mysterell is not a band, but rather one man and his project, the man in question being former Pangea member Torben Lysholm. He not only sings but also plays guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, he does it all, and the album suffers from it. The sound is rather flat and one dimensional, and in no way, shape, form or fashion does this disc manage to mimic the flow and feel of a full band. Not even with all the tricks available these days with modern technology can one man alone manage to replicate the sound of a band, atleast not judging by this release. The entire disc feels like it is being steered by a single vision, and that vision isn't 20/20, but blurs somewhere along the line. While you can question whether one man can replace an entire band, one or two guys can definitely whip up a nice listening experience, as seen with Amaze Me, and more recently,
Platens. This one just doesn't have it together, not in the songwriting or production departments. Perhaps if the
Platens project had not delivered such a cohesive, yet varied and enticing listening experience then this would have gotten off a bit easier, but with that band's disc still lingering fresh in the mind, it makes the songs offered up here almost unforgivable.
What is on hand however is quite unexciting and treads the dreaded ground of lackluster boredom. There are pop rockers with a modern feel and a heavy
Def Leppard stamp, as already mentioned. You can practically gag on the Lep influences in
"Don't Ever Stop",
"I Belong To You",
"Why?",
"Bring the House Down",
"Sling Shot",
"Take Me to the River".well that's half the album right there. The first two,
"Don't" and
"I Belong" have a catchy bounce and aren't necessarily poor songs, they just are unremarkable. The band
Mysterell is borrowing so flagrantly from does it much better, making this reek even more like a poor imitation.
"Sling Shot" seems to leave the listener in the lurch with a soft in the middle chorus that is puzzling in this pop rocker.
The rest are all ballads of varying degrees,
"When You Love" being in a Lep direction, acoustic, plunking and touched with a modern rock radio kiss, but
"Help Me Find The Way (Back to Your Heart)" is laughably corny and so typical. It's as inspiring as elevator music. John Tesh has rocked harder.
"There Was You" is a sugary offering that drops the ball in almost every department. Again, it's not a bad song, it is just uninteresting and seems to go nowhere with its nearly country-pop like sound.
This release is mind numbing and bland, there is no spark in the dark of interest here at all. Rockin' songs remain tedious, and the ballads are lifeless and just kind of hang there in the air with nothing interesting to say. "Sensational" may be enjoyable to those that don't mind pop pap, and Torben's multitude of performances are impressive, just from the sheer enormity of the music played and produced by a single entity, but the disc lacks magic and creativity. There's so much better out there being offered up, investigate those first, and if all else fails then try
Mysterell.
Written by
Alanna Wednesday, February 23, 2005
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