When I got the new album of Shylock in my hands for the first time the artwork really got my attention. A guy with an amplifier as his head, a band logo from the early 80�s and the animations which strongly reminded me of the game The Sims; again a standard hardrock album, or isn�t it?

�Shylock is a band born to play live� is stated by their biography. I must say that they have an impressive list of bands which they supported on the road. This list contains amongst others Bonfire, Gotthard, U.D.O., Axxis, Krokus, Primal Fear and Vanden Plas. With their previous records they also got a lot of attention in the media and they were described as �one of the best German newcomers in the last couple of years in the hardrock scene�. Lets see if they still can meet the standards of today�s hardrock scene.

While listening to this record you can clearly hear that we are speaking about a band with much experience. They definitely know how to do the trick and there lies also the big problem of these German rockers. The sound on this record is really modern, but the songs aren�t. Almost every track is build up from one clich� to another and therefore it�s hard to listen to the whole record in one go. It�s very boring to know how a song will evolve in the next 30 seconds.

If you ask me Shylock lives in the past. I�m not familiar with their previous work, but they must have done something terribly wrong this time or otherwise I can�t understand the positive reviews this band got for their previous releases. I will give them a 55%, but that's just because I used to like The Sims.