Metal Reviews

http://www.master-plan.net/index1_1024.html

"October-7th-2006 - New Masterplan Line Up!

The Masterplan just started recordings for their third album with the
new MK II line up:

Mike DiMeo - Vocals
Roland Grapow - Guitars
Mike Terrana - Drums
Jan S. Eckert - Bass
Axel Mackenrott - Keyboards

More detailed news to follow soon."

This was taken from their website.

No more Jorn Lande and Uli Kusch. They're hard to replace Let's hope that both Mikes do a great job. I really enjoyed both of their albums so I'm really looking forward to this.

Sucky news about Uli, one of my favourite drummers and very underrated. Terrana is obviously a very good drummer but I wonder what Masterplan are going to lose in the songwriting department without Uli.

Dimeo should be able to fill Lande's shoes well enough and hopefully he will write better lyrics.

Mike Terrana??? Wtf, is that bastard playing with EVERYBODY???

http://www.afm-records.de/de/bands/band ... rplan.html

A little sample from their new album MkII, a song called "Lost & Gone". Click on the audio player on the right side.

I really have to say that it sounds pretty boring....

In the news section...

Sounds the same to me. Boring? What's boring about it.

I noticed it right after I posted it here. Got to pay more attention from now on

I gave it only one listen so saying it's boring was probably a little too early. But that was my first impression and maybe that''ll change or maybe not. All of their single releases are pretty much the same: slow, clumsy and non-catchy. The faster songs are where they really shine.

"Enlighten Me" is an awesome tune; wicked catchy! "Back For My Life" was more along the lines of what you said.

Am I missing the obvious here? What the hell does MK II mean?

Deep Purple MK II?

You've never heard the expression MK II? Mark 2? Like "Masterplan, V 2.0"

That's my reaction as well. Terrana is a more than capable drummer so no prob with that but Uli songwriting talent will be hard to replace.

I've heard mark 2 before. Never knew it was written as MK II. I thought they became the Masterklan.

Mortal Kombat II, duh its pretty obvious.

Love him or hate him, Jorn Lande, made a big difference in this band, he's gone and the music suffers, they become just average, you wonder if this guy will ever just stick with one band, too bad b/c i really like the 2 albums he put out with Masterplan. The self title still being one of my favorites.

I don't see how. He's a vocalist, not a songwriter. I think the new album is great, by the way.

Heard new cd today and wasn't hooked enough to buy it not as good as previous albums.

In most cases i would have to agree with you in regards to the songwriting, however borrowing the fact that Jorn Lande and uli were 2 key players in this band, i think is a simple fact that album is just not going to be to the standard of the previous 2 efforts, in production, musical composition and vocals, by the way the Masterplan cd is solid, is by no means a bad album, just not to the ranking of the first 2 efforts from them, i'm sure they will improve once they get more associated to with Dimeo's style, and as we all know he is a great vocalist aswell. Also one more thing to add, what is ironic is that Lande left the band because the all too common "could not agree on where to take the musical direction for the third album" w/e the case they are still a solid band.

Jorn didn't leave because the band couldn't decide on what direction to go in. He left because he wanted to change the band.

Jorn: "I wanted to have a bigger contribution and try to change the songwriting process into a band thing. As it became obvious that this wouldn't change, I decided it was time to go and leave. Furthermore I wanted to have less experimental and modern influences in the music and get back to the more straightforward metal style."

Roland: "Roland Grapow: Well, first of all, Jorn was always complaining after the shows we did that things were not working out for him. Secondly, he wasn't always in agreement with the stuff we wrote as a band. For instance, when we finished an album, months later he would say that the melodies were too high for him, that he couldn't sing them well live, that the direction of the band wasn't hundred percent his taste, that our song material was too cheesy, and so on. The musical style that we're in is however were important for MASTERPLAN. We tried to work this out already for the "Aeronautics" album, where Jorn was pushing us also a little too much in the direction of traditional, straightforward heavy metal. He found us too progressive, too dark. Uli [Kusch, ex-drummer] and myself decided that we wanted to keep our style, maybe getting back a little bit more to the style on the first album. Then Jorn decided that he didn't want to stay in the band. He wanted to go more into the direction of his solo albums. Don't get me wrong, I still love him as a singer and he's still a good friend of mine. I think he made the right decision however, since it's not good to have somebody in the band who's unhappy all the time."


And I actually like MKII better than Aeronautics, which was I thought was good, but not nearly as good as the debut.