Not a lot is known about this original band from Philadelphia.  This band is called Cipher.  I happened to grab one of their Cds and since they are from Philly, I checked out their music.

Cipher’s Welcome to My Kingdom CD has songs that crunched like freshly poured granite on the ground.  Their 5 tracks includes On and On, Forget Me Not and Needle to the Spine which were all melodically sang by Jose Maldonado with a coarsely, gnashing, aching voice that makes me want to scream with him and feel his hard throbbing ……. emotions.

The Winter Time song started out as a soft rock ballad about “tranquil dreams”.  “Rain comes down to saturate/ Spread your wings and learn to fly/ Winter comes so this could die”.  Then Maldonado started screaming his lungs off again. 

With riveting guitars and beating of the drums, the listener will definitely stay awake like there’s a “needle to the spine”. 

Their lyrics unfortunately didn’t really turn me on.  It seemed like they were playing it safe,  although they sounded hard core. 

After listening to the CD a couple of times, it grew on me and I can listen to it again and again and enjoy every minute of it. 

May I say a younger Octane band?  Not really, they are more like the Element, but a little bit more reserved.