THE BEAST

Ron Coolen, who until now mostly sang six strings and drummed drums in tribute bands, finally decided to make his own record with his own songs as a regular musician. Ron by itself is worth a red dot, regardless of the quality of the material.

Ron did not pick anyone for the vocalist position: Burning Rain frontman Keith St. John stood in front of the microphone (he sings half of the album and the other vocalists ), who also took part in the songwriting anyway. Drums, keyboards, bass and rhythm themes all praise Ron's work. Then the guest musicians are not poor, including George Lynch, Christopher Amott, Thorsten Koehne, Steve Lamb, Joey Conception, Stéphan Forte, Daniel Verberk, Johannes Persson, Sam Walters, Göran Edman and Chris Clancy. Impressive roster, good songs, bad sound. Yes, the sound of the album is quite thin, especially with regard to drums. Which is really weird because Ron is idle drummer and this is the instrument that is the weakest on the album. Anyway, maybe next time he'll pay more attention to this.

The debut album featuring a host of guest musicians is genre-categorized as hard rock. As I listened to the record, various band names popped up several times, which could have had a great impact on Ron's music. The Rainbow parable, for example, can be heard many times, especially for the second song, White Summer. Catchy, character pieces were born in Ron's workshop anyway, so hopefully it will reach a lot of people if promoted properly. I have racked up several hard rock albums this year and won't make an exception.

The album is full of diverse, well-memorized songs. The songs that were not sung by Keith St. John are also great; selecting other vocalists was a good idea for Ron. "Rise" is not a mix of songs based on a single theme, but a disc that combines different ranges of hard rock style. The first movement, "King of Devils Big Devil Data", for example, has a completely different character than White Summer or Rainbow speed metal bending Kill Kill Kill. Obviously, the diversity of the record is due to the personality of the army musician, but the lion's share of the credit goes to Ron's creativity. Except for the sound, I can say it's a buff. Not all songs are ten-point, but they come close to it. After that, I'm wondering what Ron will do next. Will it be as good as this puck? Ron Coolen's first solo album, "Rise," was released on February 20, 2020 by RC Records. Good material, I recommend it to you! Yeah, the album cover is terrible, don't judge it if you can ...

8,5/10

Reviewed by Rozsdagyar