Flashback CD Review #62 - Ten - The Essential Collection 1995-2005

This review was written for the Rock Is Life.com website in 2006.

Ten
The Essential Collection 1995-2005
Frontiers Records - 2006
http://www.ten-online.com

What's The 4-1-1?

The British hard rockers take a look back at their first ten years of work with this two CD compilation. The band went all the way through to make this an album worthy of inclusion to your collection by completely re-recording all the songs with the current lineup of the band so the sound was both fresh and as up to date as possible.

Genre

Hard Rock / Melodic Rock

The Good

The 2 discs in this compilation are divided up between the rock songs and the ballads.

Essential Rockers Disc 1: Wow! Now this was a fun way to get introduced to the band. I really enjoyed the rather "muscular" vocal stylings of singer Gary Hughes. He had a more throaty inflection to the vocals than you might generally expect to hear on a melodic rock release. The guitar work on these hard rocking songs is excellent. The band can really craft the requisite high energy rock songs.

"Spellbound" has a very accessible sound to it. It's probably the most commercial sounding track on the entire release, but that's not to say its any kind of sell out song. It is simply the I think that would catch the casual listener's ear the most. "Ten Fathoms Deep" has a great epic feel; the rhythm of the song is fantastic. The best song on the album is without a doubt "Remembrance for the Brave / Red". I loved the chorus and the inclusion of the Scottish music in the the mix just made this song so winning. This song alone made the album for me, it's that good!

Essential Ballads Disc 2: I loved the song title when I first looked at it and then I heard the song and found that the power balled "Yesterday Lies In The Flames" was just the kind of ballad I keep looking for and hardly ever seem to find. The opening minutes of "Through The Fire" reminded me of the use of the pan flute in certain scenes in the 1980's move The Karate Kid.

The Bad

The first thing I should mention is that I really was not crazy about the split between the rockers and ballads on the album. I'm very picky about ballads and I knew if I didn't like the songs on the ballad disc, it was going to be a VERY LONG CD to slog my way through.

Essential Rockers Disc 1: The track "Apparition" sounds great but I thought the lyrics were rather pedestrian. I found "Evermore" and "After The Love Has Gone" to lack the necessary pedigree to be included here.

Essential Ballads Disc 2: You know those two songs I mentioned above in the Good section? Well, that's it! I found nothing about the other 7 songs on this disc that I liked. It was a very painful 50 plus minutes since I only had two songs that didn't make me want to scream in agony.

The Verdict

I have a split feeling about this CD. I'd rave to anyone about the rock disc, but I'm more than disappointed in finding out that the band has a poor selection of ballad material.

I think the album is worth grabbing if you haven't heard the band before and want to check them out. You might find more to enjoy with their ballad disc than I did. The rockers disc will draw you in all by itself. My rating below is mostly due to the rock disc.

Did You Know?

The group's bassist, Steve McKenna, left the group just a couple weeks prior to the release of this compilation. The current keyboardist for Deep Purple, Don Airey, has worked with the band in the past. He played on their 2000 release Babylon.

Rating: 3 out of 5