Defender专辑介绍：by Alex HendersonIf bassist/guitarist Philip Von Segebaden were a jazz musician instead of a heavy metal headbanger, he'd probably be playing everything from sexy bossa novas and funky soul-jazz to the most atonal of free jazz. In other words, Von Segebaden is a highly versatile metal artist -- and his experience playing thrash, speed metal and death metal doesn't erase his ability to provide more melodic metal. The late 1990s found him involved with two very different acts: speed band Cranium and Von Segebaden's own project Defender. Although released in 1999, Defender's first album, They Came Over the High Pass, is a throwback to the imaginative, ultra-melodic fantasy metal of artists like Iron Maiden, Queensryche, King Diamond and Manowar. Melody is an indispensable part of this CD, which employs Peter Nagy on drums and former Afflicted member Michael van de Graaf on vocals; like the music that Maiden and Queensryche provided in the 1980s, High Pass reminds us that metal can be blistering and extremely musical at the same time. Recorded in Stockholm, this engaging album is easily recommended to anyone who has spent hours savoring Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime or Maiden's Piece of Mind.