Band:	Brainstorm
Album:	Soul Temptation
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	2003
A review by:	Pierre Tombale

01. Highs Without Lows
02. Doorway To Survive
03. The Leading
04. Nunca Nos Rendimos
05. Fading
06. Shiva's Tears
07. Fornever
08. Soul Temptation
09. Dying Outside
10. To The Head
11. Rising
12. Amarillo [Tony Christie cover][Track/Digipack bonus]

The quite heavy rotation of Brainstorm's video 'Highs Without Lows' caught my attention. To finally buy this album it only took the additional dvd in the 2 disc digipack to be sold at the price of a regular album. What a good buy, I didn't expect so much, but I was rewarded with quite some more:

An interesting cover art was what made me see 'Soul Temptation', Brainstorm's 2003 album in the record store and I couldn't wait to put it into my cd player. What came out was 'Highs Without Lows' as the opener, a great song and luckily not the only one. Going further through this genre mix of power and progressive metal I found 'The Leading', 'Shiva's Tears', 'Dying Outside' and Rising' some pearls of this mix of style. 'Shiva's Tears' and 'Rising' are the proof enough that singer Andy B. Frack has a powerful and mighty voice reaching from enormous depth to incredible hight, the ladder I wouldn't have expected, but it can be heard very well on 'Fornever'
There is a bonus track called Amarillo a cover version of Tony Christie who sang it in the early 70's then titled as 'Is This The Way To Amarillo'. It's quite fun to listen, but rather unneccessary in context of the album. Throughout the songs the drumming has impressed me very much and I tried to copy this style. But hell at times it's so fast and I don't arrive in matching the timing at the given speeds, incredible. It's great fun to try anyway, lets say the drummer is a current idol of mine.
Now judging the dvd, you get a good impression what Brainstorm sound like playing live. 'Live Suffering' is a concert from the Summer Breeze Festival 2002, where material from the predecessing albums is played. 9 tracks and a 45 minute playing time make it worth having the digipack version of the album, even though I like the new songs better in general. As mentioned above you get the whole thing for the price of a regular album. The combination of Progressive Metal with Power Metal makes it more than good, by far the best release from Germany of 2003 and definetely among my top 3 of that year!