The Codex feat. Mark Boals

OK, a codex is a puzzle (as I found out from reading The Da Vinci Code). And this album is a bit of a puzzle too. On first listen, it sounds very much like a good, old-fashioned "guitar hero" album, you know the kind, virtuoso builds band then shows off his widdly-widdly prowess. And the title, "featuring" really gave it awayAnd then I checked the credits and found that Mark Boals was on vocals. So I did a bit more digging... And my memory came to my rescue. Boals has fronted Ring of Fire and also worked with Yngwie Malmsteen way back when, so that's some musical pedigree.

And it is a "guitar hero" album. The hero being one Magnus Karlsson, variously described as "Swedish guitar wizard" and "Rock God" amongst other things, all over the web. He was in the supergroup Starbreaker, amongst other illustrious projects. Almost as an afterthought, Linus Abrahamson assists on bass, with Daniel Flores (Mind's Eye) on drums.

So the puzzle is, why does this "feature" Mark Boals? Or is it that his name may be a teensy bit more famous than Karlsson's, given the Malmsteen connection?

This is yet another project, from another bunch of accomplished musicians. Boals' vocal is good but bland. Karlsson sounds like a dozen other guitar heroes, some of whome he cites as his influences. The whole album sounds just like pretty much every other guitar hero album I have heard over the last 20 years. Nothing new, no vibrancy, no creativity. Not quite plagiarism, but we should be allowed to refer to such mundanity as that.

If you like melodic rock in the canned-music-in-a-lift sort of way, then go for it. This CD is technically brilliant. If you want music to put real fire in your blood, take my advice and look elsewhere.