If you’re not into German melodic hard rock, you will definitely not like Toxic Virgin’s third effort “Sulphur”. The music as well as the vocals are exactly what you might expect from the average German rock band. The unpolished and at times uncontrolled vocals of Markus Litsch suit the music, and that says about all there is to say about the music as well. If you’re into German melodic hard rock, you’ll probably don’t like “Sulphur” either. The best songs on the album are the more up tempo rockers like “Born To Run”, but the only reason why these songs stand out over the rest is the fact that the rest of the songs are pretty bad. There are a few occasions where the band tries to escape from absolute mediocrity but despite a few nice guitar solos (the only reason why the horrible “Mad As Hell” is worth listening to) the result is as weak as the entire album.

An absolute low point is the ballad “Paradise” where dreadful melodies are accompanied by out of tune and even more dreadful vocals. Again, there is some nice guitar play there, but these 10 to 20 seconds don’t make up for the other ear aching minutes. By the time the fifth track “The Clown” kicked in (not even the worst track so far) I got fed up with this cd. My teeth simply hurt gnashing, save your teeth, avoid this album.