Masterplan is the German melodic band featuring as the main man former Helloween guitarist Roland Grapow. The band’s (Roland’s as it appears) third release now sees former Riot vocalist Mike Dimeo replacing Jorn Lande with former Rage drummer Mike Terrana replacing Uli Kusch. With Masterplan, one can draw parallels to similar bands like Nocturnal Rites where Helloween faster paced songs like ‘Warriors Cry’ to driving mid tempo ones ‘Lost and Gone’ and ‘Keep Me Burning’ use keyboard accompaniment to fill out the sound for some top notch melodic chorus based hard rock/metal.

Former singer Jorn really set the bar high for anyone following in his footsteps but Mike does him justice, complimenting Jorn’s tone yet not a copy and souring in his own right on something like ‘Take Me Over’. Mike reminds me a lot of Johnny Gioeli the singer from the Axel Rudi Pell band.

"MKII" is a rather solid follow up to “Aeronautics” from 2004 I recommend checking it out.