Reviewed by Dave Caughey

"It's A Jungle Out There", Mastedon's debut was one of 1989's biggest highlights, with a winning formula of gritty hard rock, musical imagination, and most of all variety. Unfortunately between then and the recording of "Lofcaudio" the Elefante brothers appear to have lost the blueprint of that formula. Once again John and Dino have enlisted the talents of a number of guest musicians and vocalists, including Guardians's guitarist extraordinaire Tony Palacios, and the marvellously gifted vocalist Dave Amato. So where have Mastedon gone wrong? Firstly and most importantly the variety has gone. Whereas "It's A Jungle Out There" had the Cinderella, AC/DC raspings of X-Sinner's David Robbins, and the David Lee Roth-style Perry Lee, "Lofcaudio" has four vocalists namely John Elefante, Dave Amato, Tom Bowes, and James Dean Longacre who are all undoubtedly very talented but they all have very similar vocal styles. Secondly the music is mid-tempo, "safe" AOR instead of the decidedly more experimental jazz-influenced style John Elefante showed in his time with Kansas, or the storming hard rock of Mastedon's debut. Really it is too much of the same thing, which makes this album drop in my estimation. There are still some good quality tracks on this album namely the opener "Holiest One", 'Life On The Line", "when It All Comes Down" and the Kansas style "Thief In The Night". However it must be said that Mastedon set a standard with their debut that "Lofcaudio" could not follow up. However yet again as I gripped with the Halo album, the biggest tragedy is that Tony Palacios still doesn't get a chance to melt the fretboard!!

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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