Band:	Axel Rudi Pell
Album:	The Masquerade Ball
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal
Release date:	April 10, 2000
Guest review by:	DayFly

01. The Arrival (Intro)
02. Earls Of Black
03. Voodoo Nights
04. Night And Rain
05. The Masquerade Ball
06. Tear Down The Walls
07. The Line
08. Hot Wheels
09. The Temple Of The Holy
10. July Morning [Uriah Heep cover]

To get this out of the way, I consider Axel Rudi Pell a horrible guitarist. Decent, occasionally even great composer, but horrible musician and I find it baffling that this barely gets remarked. Extreme metal fans tend to have a point when they say that creative musicians move beyond the older, worn-out styles and the merit of having highly performed retreads of Deep Purple or Rainbow from 1978 is debatable at best, to which I find myself at loss for better arguments other than advising them to f*ck off. "At least Ritchie Blackmore gets more feeling out of a properly bent note than most black metal bands out of entire discographies," I say - only to be confronted with the album at hand and have the last bit of plausibility to an (admittedly flimsy) argument shatter right then and there.

If you were wondering why there were more mentions of Ritchie Blackmore in the last paragraph than of Axel Rudi Pell, it's because there is more Ritchie Blackmore in the general soundscape than anything else. The production undoubtedly had a smaller budget than Rainbow in the '70s, but also access to better equipment, so it evens out. Order of the day consists of rumbling, mid-paced anthems, punchy rockers and quite a large number of soulful ballads, sprinkled with a dash of epic courtesy of keyboardist Ferdy Doernberg. It's too bad the one thing Pell could not lift from his idol is a vibrato not sounding like a hand cramping on the fretboard and the sloppiest speed runs this side of a hardcore punk band. I barely even play guitar and get creeps whenever Pell takes a solo. Luckily for Pell, his side men somewhat make up for whatever hack the proud virtuoso is unleashing, but it does raise the question if nobody involved dares to speak up to the man, or if nobody simply bothers.

Somehow I tend to believe the former. Mike Terrana is a fantastic drummer (absolutely no sense when to reign it in, but fantastic drummer) and the way Johnny Gioeli gives his every last bit to the vocal lines makes me sure some people involved care about performance. Gioeli among all musicians deserves special praise, selling even the most cliched lyrics with a conviction and attitude that will win anyone over. The expected quality of songwriting on any Axel Rudi Pell album is reasonably high, with some variance in between. Songs always tend to drag on for too long, Terrana never knows when to behave himself, Pell is obnoxious as a soloist, which really makes it impressive that Pell's albums are usually quite listenable. I personally believe The Masquerade Ball is below average for the band and only like the quasi butt-rock of "Voodoo Nights" and the more conventional metal of "Tear Down the Walls," but your mileage may vary and if you happen to like any album of Pell you will be reasonably well off here. Recommended to casual listeners wishing back the old days. Musicians or people even remotely interested in guitar playing, beware.