WYCKED SYNN – The Vision

So, what would you get if you took the soaring range of Geoff Tate and the passion and raw energy of Ron Keel, and surgically implanted those abilities in someone’s vocal cords? Well, you’d get Gary Grant, the leader singer for a band called Wycked Synn, who are making their debut release this summer and popping up on heavy metal shows (The Classic Metal Show, Mid Week Mayhem, Doug Ball’s Radioactive Friday etc.) and having their banner spread all over the place (check out the front page of Metal Express.) They did their job; now it’s your turn to do yours.

The CD is called The Vision, and it was written by guitarist Ken Orth and produced by Orth and Grant. The CD is somewhat of a concept album, in Orth’s words, “a hard luck story about a guy who makes the wrong decisions in life and has to face the consequences.” Grant wrote all the lyrics.

Sometimes you’ll hear a song that blows you away. It might have happened with “Photograph” or maybe even “One.” If you check out the fifth track on The Vision, you’ll hear another one. The song is called “If You Said Goodbye.” It begins with pounding drums, a thumping bass line, and then Orth’s guitar join the fray. The songs crescendos at the chorus, with Grant just belting out the line “you said you’d never leave me, and I don’t know what to do!” It is actually one of the more “radio friendly” songs on the CD, but it is by no means “mellow.” Also, this song has too much emotion to just be called “a good song.” This tune alone makes it worth buying.

“I wanted so badly to hurt you, but I hurt myself instead, living like I was dead.” That’s their story. You will hear an old Queensrÿche touch at times during this CD, and with the female vocals added to Grant’s on “Let It Rain,” their one slow song does sound like something akin to Operation: Mindcrime era Queensrÿche. You will again be impressed with Grant’s range, since he matches the female vocalist note for note.

But Wycked Synn leans farther towards power metal than commercial heavy metal. “Til The End” is a hard song that has a ripping guitar solo and searing vocals. As you listen to this CD a couple of times, you’ll also hear that they have a penchant for writing memorable lyrics. They stick in your head after almost one listen, and you will be screaming along.

One thing Wycked Synn admits is that they had studio musicians fill in when they recorded the CD and didn’t have time to re-record before it was published. Now that the cast is assembled, Orth makes it sound like the studio musicians did well, but not AS well as the new players. Honestly, you won’t find any complaints or even notice that once you hear The Vision, but when he says live they have even more energy, well, they will definitely open some eyes and ears once they hit the road.

Some other intense and commendable songs on The Vision are “Tell the Tale,” mostly because of its power metal sounding double-bass, “In My Mind,” because of the “wicked” drumming at the start of the song and the groove created by the guitar and bass, and “The Vision,” which actually sounds a little like a Cinderella song at the start. In fact, the only song that is just average is the instrumental “KMA.”

Wycked Synn has a chance to make something of themselves. They are hard enough to make any true metal fan happy and melodic enough to make hard rock fans take notice. You might as well get on board and pick up the CD now, so you can say somewhere down the road that you owned The Vision on July 24, 2003 when it was originally released.