Eden’s Curse is a band that was formed by Michael Eden, former Seven Ten vocalist and Paul Logue, former Powerplay magazine staff write bassist with Cry Havoc/Age Of Reason. Meeting through the noticeboard of a website the pair have written an album chock full of cracking tunes and recruited a band that is more than capable of doing them the justice they deserve. First to join the fold was drummer Pete Newdeck and then came guitarist Thorsten Koehne before the line up was rounded about with Axel Rudi Pell’s keyboard player Ferdy Doernberg.

So what about the music. Well how about Melodic hard ROCK!!!. On first listen the album comes over as a heavier version of Ten circa their Name Of The Rose and The Robe period, with a singer that comes pretty close to Sebastian Bach without sounding like a clone of the former Skid Row frontman. However on repeated listens more and more influences become apparent, the likes of Deep Purple for instance, just check out Don't Bring Me Down, it’s Burn on speed....

The Ten influence comes mainly from the extended into’s to some of the songs. Opening pairing Book Of Life and Judgement Day in particular could be a heavier Ten, and I don’t whether The Bruce/Fallen King is serious, or just a bit fun at Logue's Scottish roots, but it is very reminiscent of Ten's We Rule The Night. But don’t think that Eden's Curse are a one dimensional outfit, check out Fly Away for an excellent modern European style rocker.

Other notable tracks on the album include The Eyes Of The World, written by Evidence One's main man Carsten Schultz and, as such, is very much in the vein of the new Evidence One album. The album is closed out by a surprising cover of the Steel Dragon/Steelheart track We All Die Young that was originally included on the soundtrack to the film Rock Star - whilst not as heavy as the original Eden's Curse certainly do, what is a fantastic song in its own right, complete justice.

I’ve just cherry picked some of the highlights of the album here, but the strength of this album is that all of the tracks are of a uniformly high standard and it's to the songwriters credit that the two covers do not stand out like sore thumbs but rather fit neatly into the body of work Eden's Curse present. Yes there are plenty of influences on show, but what Eden's Curse have managed to achieve is a blend of all that is good in rock music and come up with their own sound.

This is of course helped by Dennis Ward's typical excellent production, along with the backing vocals of David Readman and Dougie White. In fact about the only negative point one can raise is that perhaps the band have slightly under utilized the keyboards of Ferdy Doernberg but, given that the real star of the show is guitarist Thorsten Koehne, this is only a minor quibble. Eden's Curse have served up an album that is, without doubt, a blend of the best of American and European hard rock.

Let us know your views on Eden's Curse

Track Listing

Book Of Life…(into)
Judgement Day
Eyes Of The World
Stronger Than The Flame
The Voice Inside
After The Love Is Gone
Fly Away
What Are You Waiting For
Eden's Curse
Don't Bring Me Down
Heaven Touch Me
The Bruce (Intro)
Fallen King
We All Die Young

Line Up

Michael Eden - Vocals
Thorsten Koehne - Guitars
Pete Newdeck - Drums
Paul Logue - Bass
Ferdy Doernberg - Keyboards