Decay

This is the debut for Tension, a German band playing back-to-the-roots Heavy Metal with more than a bit of NWOBHM and arena-rock flair. The riffs and guitar playing on this are the real draw, as they are uniformly awesome, with plenty of air-guitar moments and headbanging crunch. The low point of this band is vocalist Maik Huber, as he just has a weak, kind of vague voice that mumbles his way through the songs, never enunciating anything clearly enough to sound like he cares, or even for sure what language he is singing in. He has range, and it sounds like he could do better than this, but he’s not. This band could go places if they got a better singer, for sure.