As far as I know, this is the first release of this North German band. After a short intro the opener ‘K.A.T.P.’ starts out pretty thrashy and turns into a deadly groover. Unfortunately, like on a few more songs (e. g. ‘Clown’ or ‘Feel The Pain’), the chorus gets a little on my nerves: too repetitive. The tempo of this record may roughly described as a mix of Thrash with lots of groove that reminds me quite a bit of (mostly early) 90s Hardcore. Some 90s METALLICA, too. But there is a calm, melodic side to X-SHOT as well, making the record sound pretty well-balanced. And, yes, there is some truth about the term “Nu Metal” as well but it’s not that bad… Doesn’t really fit into my drawers. Cool drummer, rather simple but effective instrumentation and I like the singer’s voice. Unfortunately, he’s the most obvious point of weakness as well because at times his vocal lines still sound utterly amateur-like and his pronunciation of English is far from being perfect as well: lots of work ahead! One of the weakest song (musically as well) – ‘Soldier’ – even starts with the lyrics from MOTÖRHEAD’s ‘1916’. Ouch! And the ‘Road-Song’ simply sucks! Still, there is a lot of good stuff around, like one of my faves at the time: ‘F.H.K.’ or the cool rocker ‘King Me’, so use the skip button. But what happened to the sound on that song? Sounds strange. Apart from that, the production is solid but swallows the guitar a little. Too much bass. So I’d say there’s still a lot of work ahead for X-SHOT and singer Felix in particular but there is quite some potential as well. Let’s wait for the next effort! www.x-shot1.com