I'm not entirely certain whether I should credit an album called 'Cage 2' to a duo called 'Dario Mollo & Tony Martin', or an album called '2' to a band called The Cage, but who cares anyway, so just read on.

I cannot say it enough, but some of the songs on Dario Mollo & Tony Martin's second Cage album are simply brilliant! The old-fashioned yet energetic Heavy A.O.R. was injected with enough pure Heavy Metal to make it sound extremely heavy when compared to other bands using the same types of choruses and song structures (namely FM Metal bands and AOR band. They were indeed among the first to get a new Metal subgenre going, called 'Heavy AOR'). The guitar playing is finger lickin' good as well. Another point worth mentioning are the powerful melodic vocals of ex-Black Sabbath's Tony Martin who sometimes sounds very much like Ronnie James Dio (just listen to the track 'Balance of Power'). Good production too. In short, it'll be hard to improve this in the future.

According to yours truly the top songs on the album are the opening track 'Terra Toria', the up-tempo song 'Balance of Power' and the Led Zeppelin-cover 'Dazed and Confused'. 'Wind of Change' on the other hand is too sugar-coated for my taste and therefore the only "weak" song on here.


Dario Mollo's Website: http://www.dariomollo.com
Tony Martin's website: http://www.tonymartin.net