Iain Ashley Hersey Nomad Perris Records PER2042 - Released: October 7, 2008 Iain Ashley Hersey surprised us 3 years ago with his 2nd album "The Holy Grail". The CD gave us some very good heavy, bluesy and melodic rock in the vein of Deep Purple during the 70's. The guitarplaying of Iain was very much in the style of Ritchie Blackmore with also influences of Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix. He used 4 singers on that CD. Graham Bonnet is one of them. Now 3 years later Iain has a follow-up for that excellent album. On this CD he used one of the singers of "The Holy Grail" on 9 of the 10 songs. That singer is Carsten "Lizard" Schulz. He is known from his work with Domain, Evidence One and Midnite Club. And he's also the singer of the German Rainbow/Purple/Whitesnake tribute band Mistreated. His voice sounds quite much in the street of Glenn Hughes. Iain has found himself a great line-up for this new CD. Especially the organ player Holger Seeger sounds excellent. Great Hammond sound like Jon Lord in his best days. Right from the start Iain kicks off with some heavy bluesy hardrock in "Nicotine Dreams". And he continues that style through the whole CD. "Sacrifice The Sun" has some bluesy Whitesnake moments. "Voodoo Spirits" kicks off with some awful intro on an accordion, lucky enough the intro only takes a quarter of a minute and the song itself is great with some Led Zep in it. The best has been saved to the end. The last track is a cover of Rainbow's "L.A. Connection". And it's a damn good version. The vocals are handled by non other than Doogie White. And he sings the Ronnie James Dio era track splendid. Not up to the 70's Ronnie standards but great anyway. Iain plays with a feel like Ritchie did on "Gates of Babylon" and the organ sounds bloody great too. Holger Seeger the organplayer even throws in the "In the Hall of the Mountain King" riff in the end. Absolute class! We gave a 5 out of 5 rating to the last CD by Iain Ashley Hersey 3 years ago. This one is at least as good as that one, if not better. Iain is a great guitarplayer and found in Lizard a fine singer. Ofcourse it's a nice surprise to hear Doogie White on an old Rainbow track. So this is a highly recommended CD. Iain Ashley Hersey: www.iainashleyhersey.com Perris Records: www.perrisrecords.com