Ride The Sky – New Protection

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Nuclear Blast
Produced by Ride The Sky

Another new band from ex-Helloween/Gamma Ray/Masterplan drummer Uli Kusch, this time with Tears of Anger duo Bjorn (vocals, also Beyond Twilight) and Benny (guitar, also Xsavior) Jansson.

After drumming on four tracks on the new Tears of Anger album Uli sent four of his own songs to the Janssons and the trio formed Ride The Sky on the basis of these tracks. The band are completed by Benny’s Xsavior bandmate Mathias Garnas (bass) and Dionysus keyboard player Kaspar Dahlqvist.

I can’t quite work out why Kusch abandoned Beautiful Sin, with whom he released an album at the beginning of the year, to concentrate on Ride The Sky. The Beautiful Sin album was outstanding; intricate and heavy with amazing vocals from Magali Leuyten. Leaving that for what is a rather middle-of-the-road melodic metal offering which doesn’t, on the whole, sound particularly innovative or unique seems a strange move. We’ve already got Jorn, Axel Rudi Pell and Stratovarius to name just three that are doing this kind of thing better.

Heavy application of keyboards and saccharine melodies water down any potential metal-impact the record may have had, and aside from a few blistering guitar solos (A Smile From Heaven’s Eye), the record comes across like a weak Jorn album. Bjorn Jansson’s similarities to Jorn Lande’s style have obviously not been lost on others as well, as this was the reason he was chosen to replace Lande in Beyond Twilight.

It’s not a bad album, per sae. There are some undoubted highlights, like the breathtaking keyboards in The Prince of Darkness, the crushing riffs of Break The Chains (even if they are momentary and suffer from keyboard interference), Corroded Dreams‘ driving pulse and some of Benny Jansson’s solos, but that’s about it. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. It’s just more of what we’ve heard by countless others before.

Fans of Masterplan and Jorn will enjoy this initially, but it will mostly serve to make them go back to those albums because they’re all better. And Kusch was much better off in Beautiful Sin.

“ middle-of-the-road melodic metal ”

Tracklist: New Protection / A Smile From Heaven’s Eye / Silent War / The Prince of Darkness / Break The Chains / Corroded Dreams / The End of Days / Far Beyond The Stars / Black Cloud / Endless / Heaven Only Knows / A Crack In The Wall

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Power Metal, Ride The Sky