Stephen Toby Hitchcock came out from nowhere and his name began to rise as soon as he works with legendary musician/songwriter Jim Peterik in their duet project, Pride of Lions, and after receiving a big acclamation from the melodic rock community, he decided to shoot for a solo album right for the very first time and behind his back is another talented machine, Erik Martensson, who plays most of the instruments, and of course, providing him his monstrously beautiful songs.

Predictably heavier and louder than Pride of Lions' output, I also have to admit that this is better than any PoL's catalogue. Not only that I honestly think Martensson grows into a better and better writer, Hitchcock's voice is surprisingly fits and shines on harder tracks. My personal faves here are 'This Is The Moment', an uptempo gem and also his first single; 'I Should Have Said', a brilliantly composed tune; 'If It's To Be', still heavy with superb solo; and 'Tear Down The Barricades', this is even more melodic metal to my ears.

But the rest are also great and probably only the last two tracks that I think a bit weak and that's because I was treated with ten amazing tracks earlier. 'One Day I'll Stop Loving You' is a nice simple ballad, not as strong as the uptempo part, but a good relaxing track in the middle. The production is awesome, and I strongly recommend this one if you're into melodic rock and don't mind some metallic edge to the rhythm. One of the bigger albums of 2011 for me!

Time Signature This is the moment...

Genre: melodic metal / hardrock

Take a very talented AOR friendly vocalist and put him together with a talented multi-instrumentalist and produce, and the end result is likely to be something along the lines of Toby Hitchcock's debut album, "Mercury's Down".

Hitchcock has the pipes just for this kind of melodic metal/hardrock, and from beginning to end, his vocals are just impressive. Equally impressive is Erik Martensson's performance on all instruments, and he plays each instrument as if it were his primary instrument.

Musically, I guess this release is perhaps primarily melodic hard rock, but there are plenty of heavy metal elements all over the place, and tracks like 'Tear Down the Barricades', 'A Different Drum', and 'Mercury's Down' are, for my money, all out heavy metal tunes. One thing that characterizes this album is how uplifting a lot of the tracks are, and how catchy the vocal melodies are.

In all, this is a well-balanced AOR-friendly melodic metal release which has a lot of hit potential, and, if you like your rock music hard-hitting and melodic at the same time, you should check this release out.