POWER GAMES

Lars Eric Mattson is one of the greatest little discoverd guitarist in last 20 years. Besides his solo career who begun somewhere in mid '80's with first album under his name in 1988, he has many colaborations with other bands from prog metal like Condition Red , Book of Reflections, etc. and aswel is the owner of famous Lion Music label, a busy man for sure. For a decade or so he shorted his name to Mattson and release 5 album under this name but continuing to have aswell albums under his full name Lars Eric Mattson. If previous albums, those from early '90's were more towards hard rock with some neo classical aproach here and there, this album and aswell the next one has a fully progressive metal aproach, where his guitar truly shines. Power games is the name of the album issued in 2003 , is the second album under Mattson name, of course relesed by Lion Music. A fairly good album, where Lars manage to come with some great moments both on guitar and aswell on keybords side, because he done and compose the keys parts aswell. prog metal is the name of the game here, with Lance King ( from Balance of Power fame and later on we find him on Pyramze) behind the mic, who has a very good voice for such kind of prog metal, technical but in same time melodic full of hooks and great musicianship. While all the pieces stands as good, like the opening track Open The Gate , great breaks and duels between guitar and keys, good voice, I think a piece who has a name like Beyond The Horizon (Guitar Concerto No 1 and almost 18 min in lenght must be listen copuple of time to be fully appreciated. Here Larson gives the best he got, maybe is little longer then I like to be, if were shorter with 3-4 min then were great , otherwise sometime I feel like I'm losing patience till the end. I like Mattson guitar work, how he playes, all, maybe he is not one of the top composers in prog metal, for sure is one hell of a musician, with moderate succes worl wide.This is a good album, 3 stars for sure towards 3.5 in places, nothinmg over the top nothing boring or bad aswel. Also , the cover art is excellent showing exactly what is inside the album, made by brilliant Swedish artist, Mattias Noren

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