Let us immediately clarify the disc before us. Formally it is credited to NUCLEAR BLAST ALLSTARS, but in reality the album should bear the name of Victor Smolski — he is the project's coordinator and the author of all the music. He performed guitar parts on all 10 tracks, recorded bass on 8 out of 10, played keyboards on several, and to round out the statistics, Andre Hilgers is behind the drum kit on 8 tracks, while Peavy Wagner wrote the lyrics for those same songs. In other words, the current lineup of RAGE was not merely involved in the project — they essentially created it. There are accordingly 10 vocalists, each performing one song. The booklet features a message from each of them, preceded by a message from Smolski.
The first song is performed by Tobias Sammet. Honestly, from a musical standpoint, the composition is so unlike Tobias's work in EDGUY and AVANTASIA that it's hard to believe the vocalist of those projects is singing. Tobias indeed sings in a somewhat different timbre, in accordance with the music Victor wrote for him. The next song, "Terrified," is pure RAGE, as Peter 'Peavy' Wagner is at the microphone — a sufficiently aggressive track with sharp guitar parts and a rough vocal line. We turn the booklet page and see Tony Kakko, who explains that the song "Ruling The World" differs so much from SONATA ARCTICA's music that he needed considerable time to figure out how to perform it. However, the result turned out more than successful. Mats Leven performs "Death Is Alive" — a dark, eerie composition with a large progressive element in its sound. Mats, incidentally, demonstrates the brilliant capabilities of his voice, the ability to deliver high lyrical parts alongside low, timbrally different ones.
The fifth track is arguably the most interesting on the album. After all, all the vocalists invited by Victor are or were involved in power metal projects, albeit of different schools and eras — all except one. Schmier's presence on the album is an interesting fact in itself. What is he doing here, one might ask, but in his message (naturally, very pompous), the famous German thrasher explains everything: "Peavy and I have been friends since '85, Victor is a stunning guitarist, and I was finally able to work with them in the studio. 'Bloodsucker' is the heaviest track on this album. We had fun and drank plenty of beer while recording vocals. Feel the spirit of the '80s in this oldschool power/speed track." And indeed, the clean backing vocals were performed by Peavy.
The second half of the album opens with the fascinating composition "Slaves To The Desert" — possibly the strongest on the album. "Actually, Victor wrote this song for his former band MIND ODYSSEY; it was very interesting for me to sing a song written for a James LaBrie-style vocal," says Hansi Kursch. The spirit of his performance immediately brings to mind the collaborative work of Hansi and Schaffer. The timbre of the next track's vocalist is unmistakable — Deris outside of HELLOWEEN has always been more interesting as a singer, and "A Perfect Day" confirms this once again: a short song with a sufficiently aggressive vocal line.
Oddleif Stensland from COMMUNIC handled his mission quite well — the composition turned out almost prog-like, so Oddleif presumably felt right at home. The penultimate track is performed by Marco Hietala, vocalist and bassist of TAROT — a great curiosity on the metal scene. Having existed since 1985 and enjoying considerable popularity in their homeland Finland, their first tours abroad took place in 2007 after Nuclear Blast picked them up. He performs quite well, incidentally. The final track and the only female vocalist on the disc — "In The Picture" is performed by Tarja Turunen, tackling music of a kind she had never encountered before. Her pseudo-operatic vocals are out of place here; what's needed is a more rock-oriented approach. The result is arguably the weakest track on the album in terms of the vocal component.
In conclusion, with enormous respect to Victor Smolski, it might have been worth diversifying the album somewhat in terms of musical authorship. Essentially, what we hear is work in the spirit of recent RAGE with different vocalists — some songs a bit rougher and more aggressive, others more lyrical and dramatic, all just like this wonderful German trio. The vocalists handled their assigned tasks excellently; with the exception of Tarja, everyone managed to adapt their vocals to the given tasks and find a compromise between Victor's music and their own timbral capabilities without betraying their identity. We now await the sequel compilation, "Out Of The Dark" — after all, Nuclear Blast started as an extreme music label and only later broadened its scope.