Imperial Rage is a four- piece from USA who has just released their debut on Pulse Records. The cd has 13 tracks, nicely balanced between shredding instrumentals, in your face rockers and two ballads. Just to set things straight, this is not prog metal, but basically it`s neoclassical melodic metal with a few progressive elements. The cd starts off with two instrumentals/intros. Track three is when the action begins. This is the title track, and when they hit the first note you already know this guitarist is a shredder. The songs starts with fast guitar attack and fast drumming. The song maintain the speedy tempo through the whole track, and has some cool classical guitar solos and a good chorus.

Next track "Can`t get away" doesn`t have the same tempo, but nevertheless it is a good uptempo rocker ala early Axel Rudi Pell, with a good melodyline and chorus. Guitarist Hawk is of course pulling off one sweeping solo after the other.

The following track is an instrumental and now the guitarist have full freedom to show what he`s good for. This is a very good uptempo neoclassical melody with monstrous guitarplaying. This guy is all over the place.

It`s obvious guitarist and songwriter Hawk is influenced by the great classical composers as well as snapping up a thing or two by the major leading neoclassical guitarists of the 80`s and 90`s, as most of the material has a neoclassical feeling to it.

There are a few more instrumentals offered on the cd and they are all of high quality. The guitarist prove that he is able not just to shred, but is in command of various techniques as well as creating good melodies. The last uptempo song with vocals is "King`s Plight", a nice melodic rocker in the tradition of Impellitteri. Featuring an excellent chorus and blistering fretwork.

Besides the instrumentals and the rockier tracks there are two ballads on this disc. First out "Never wanna stay" is a good standard ballad while the acoustic "Miles away" features a good acoustic solo and a nice chorus. Neither of these tracks are great, but good, standard ballads. It seems to me that the vocalist, who does a good job on the uptempo tracks, exert himself too much on the ballads and is at times a bit annoying. His voice clearly suits the rockier tracks better. Soundwise the production is ok . It could have been better, but is still above average. The drum sound is a bit flat and there could have been more depth and power added to the instruments.

This is without doubt a very competent band with good musicians, and for a debut cd, this is very good. Fans of various guitarheroes will love this stuff as well as fans of bands like Impellitteri, Malmsteen and Axel Rudi Pell. The debut cd is filled with great instrumentals and good melodic rockers to entertain the listener. The cd needs a couple of spins before the songs really come to its right, but once they do, they rock !

I`m very excited to see what Imperial Rage can come up with in the future, because it still seems like they have more up their sleeves. I give this cd 7,5 points out of 10. This debut cd is well worth checking out and if you`re a fan of the above mentioned and related bands, this cd deserves a place in your collection. The next one could be killer !