Skeletoon - The Curse of the Avenger

Skeletoon began their life almost ten years ago as a Helloween cover band. Now in collaboration with a former pumpkin man, more recently responsible for the Masterplan albums, Mr. Ronald Grapow along with D, Meloni from Ensight on more guitars and Charlie Dho from The Fallen Angel and Henry Sidoti on drums. Without having ever heard them before, I could tell by the vocals of Tomi Fooler, their singer, that they are/he is Italian. While he has the “notes” albeit in a quite thin way that sounds like a weak Dickinson/Kiske clone, the most disappointing thing here is the tunes that sound like Helloween “rejects” with only the two tunes that Grapow plays in, “What I Want” and “Heroes Don’t Complain” as well as the ballad “Hymn to the Moon” and marginally the title track “The Curse of the Avenger” being half decent in terms of songwriting.
 
At hardly 36 minutes it’s not much to speak and it’s decidedly derivative/not original and not as stellar as it would have to be to get noticed in the overpopulated and rather stagnant Europower sub-genre. Not terrible, but way more effort would be needed to get somewhere…