A 5-year break is a rather long period of time, nowadays, especially when we are talking about the music business. As a matter of fact, Ten could have easily blamed themselves for two things. Firstly, because they blew the chance to gain more money as their albums are more than qualitative and secondly because “Stormwarning” may be a good record but it is far inferior to all the efforts that Gary Hughes and Co. has presented after “Spellbound” (1999). I won’t even mention the fact that the band has lost 5 precious years of its career…
Anyway, the album’s overall style may initially seem loyal to the band’s previous albums but it is evidently…distorted. From a compositional point of view, and prominently after a certain point during the album’s duration, the tempo loses speed, the songs become nerveless and we steadily lose the interest to keep pace with Gary Hughes. Ten seems to have abandoned their familiar style and we can honestly say that there isn’t even a single song in sight that could have fit in a “best-of” package by the band. To add insult to injury, the overall mediocre result is responsible for the…disappearance of the great Mark Zonder behind the drums…let’s hope that we would appreciate his flawless drum talent when Ten hit the road for a seried of concerts.
“Stormwarning” is simply OK, but unfortunately the characterization “OK” for Ten is not sufficient enough…
