Ten --- Heresy and creed
To say this album totally blew me away would be the understatement of the year. After the frankly disappointing "Stormwarning" of last year, their first album since 2006, Ten have once again reaffirmed my faith in them. Criminally unknown generally, this is a band that takes its music very seriously. From big rocking power epics to gentle piano ballads and everything in between, "Heresy and creed" has the lot.
I tend to judge the better albums of the year by how often I can constantly play and replay them and not get bored. This was one I literally could not stop playing, and had to say to myself after about the twelfth straight spin, look you have to move on to other albums! Well, maybe just once more... I cannot get enough of this album and if it were the only one on my ipod it would be a very long time before I got tired of it.
The core band, the heart of Ten, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Gary Hughes and guitarist John Halliwell are joined by some new faces and some old ones returning, and the whole album is a vindication of the band's seventeen years pumping out the finest melodic metal, AOR and pure rockin' Heaven while everyone ignores them. What a world.
Once I compiled this list, there was only ever going to be one winner. And this is it. Album of the year by a country mile.
Woo-hoo! (What do you expect?) Everything
D'oh! Nothing; even the bonus track is class!
There were many albums that didn't make the cut, and I may add those later on. For now, this is my list, thanks for reading!
