THE ALTAR (E)

MVP is short for Michael Viscera Project, a heavy metal project involving a great deal of well-known guitarists like Jimi Bell (House Of Lords), Roland Grapow (Helloween, Masterplan) and Robert Marcello (Ironhorse), just to name a few. Together with these guitarists, singer Michael Viscera (Yngwie Malmsteen, Loudness, amongst others), who was also responsible for the production, composed twelve songs and two bonus tracks for The Altar, his third solo album featuring lots of matchless guitar solos and of course his own voice. The music still falls in the heavy metal genre despite the keyboards played by Mats Olausson which provide us with a superb and orchestral overture and fine orchestrations. The sharp, forced and fairly high-pitched voice of Viscera is an interesting contrast to the massive guitarriffs by Jimi Bell and others. The influences of Deep Purple (On Your Way To Hell) and above all in the compositions of Black Sabbath can clearly be recognized. Most of the basses are played by Chris McCarvill and most of the drums by B.J. Zampa. Between the pumping hard rock on this album, there's only one ballad featuring Roland Grapow playing the only really melodic guitarsolo, all the other solos being characterized by tremendous speed and showing off skills. Especially when you listen to the album with headphones, it's striking that all tracks when fading away are cut off abruptly. A minor complaint about the production because for the rest the records sounds quite okay. The compositions are not particularly original and personally I'm not a great fan of Viscera's voice, so the album's got a modest ranking.