Mark Boals & Ring Of Fire
All The Best!

Mark Boals isn’t an unknown guy; he has been heard with Yngwie Malmsteen and lots of other artists. He has done three solo albums and four studio albums with his band Ring of Fire, and from these albums he selects some 40% of the songs to make a best of release with one disk for his solo albums and another for Ring of Fire. In total thirty tracks and well over two and a half hour of music, that is much and I cannot help but think that Boals haven’t really done any selecting at all – a best of should be a collection of the absolute best, like ten percent of the songs at maximum, I don’t think a best of album should be more than one CD, maximum seventy minutes or thereabout. This is way longer.

Heavy metal or melodic metal is what it is, Mark sings really well with a strong voice. The selection of songs doesn’t really mark anything, the album is really long and takes forever to play through – it feels quite long and unvaried when listen through the whole thing. The sound is good, and it feels quite coherent, the variation through songs from different albums is negated by the insane playing time. It feels kind of lazy.

There is nothing wrong with the songs, there are several really good ones throughout the album. The long playing time is a moot point and I think they could have narrowed the selection a lot, a best of with fourteen maybe fifteen songs would have been more than enough. The selection is only seven albums and they manage to pick thirty – I would have taken on average two from each album, more is too much, no matter which band you want to make a best of for. I think one of the studio albums by Ring of Fire or the Mark Boals solo album Ring of Fire is a way better choice than this one – I cannot really see the why of this album.

It is one more of those pointless best of albums, or “most of” might be a better thing to call it. I like Mark Boals and his vocal skills, but this album is more like a business release, like one of all those pointless products producer wants us to buy. It is not exciting or interesting enough to excite and it doesn’t really show the best of Mark Boals, the best songs are there but so are plenty of average songs, and they are diluting the album into something less than best of. I think we can do very well without this one, no matter the price it feels like a waste of time and money.

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