SouthSideoftheSky Bad karma

Epica is by some considered to be more progressive than previous albums by Kamelot. If there is something to this decree it is probably in virtue of two things: that it is conceptual and that it is even more symphonic or even orchestral than the previous album, Karma. While this is all true, I personally think that the musical direction remains basically the same as on Karma. This means that what we have here is just more of the same which is Kamelot's own brand of Symphonic Power Metal. I pointed out already in my review of Karma that being symphonic or orchestral should not be confused with being progressive. For me, this album comes across as more bombastic and quite overblown in a way that the previous two albums did not.

What they have done for this release is to add a conceptual element as well as several short symphonic interludes between the songs and some occasional operatic female vocals. There are also a couple of spoken word passages and small pieces of Pink Floyd-ish dialog. None of these additions are particularly successful in my opinion, and make the album a bit incoherent and lacking in direction. Apart from these supposed enhancers of their basic sound, Kamelot follow their previous formula pretty closely with Epica. Just like the previous two albums, the present one too starts with a short instrumental by way of introduction. What follows is a rather typical set of Power Metal numbers with catchy melodies and the characteristic rapid dual bass drum attack. I like this type of song to a degree, but I sometimes find them a bit tedious. Overall, I think that these songs were stronger on Karma and The Fourth Legacy.

There are however also some very good moments on Epica. These mostly come towards middle and end of the album. The first that really caught my attention was A Feast For The Vain with its excellent Flamenco-influenced (!) middle section and brilliant acoustic and electric guitar work. This song would have fitted well on The Fourth Legacy which, in my opinion, is Kamelot's best album. On The Coldest Winter Night is a very nice acoustic ballad, with an almost jazzy feel. The short acoustic guitar solo is wonderful. Lost & Damned is another strong number. The very appealing Folk influences that, for me, made The Fourth Legacy such a thrilling experience are more apparent here than they ever were on Karma. The use of the bandeón, which is a kind of Latin accordion, was probably unheard of within Metal music before the release of this album and gives a nice touch to the song. (The brilliant guitarist Al Di Meola is very fond if this instrument that brings a melancholic and nostalgic mood and maybe the Kamelot guys have been listening to Di Meola's music as inspiration?) Had only the rest of the album been as eclectic and inspired as this!

Epica is not a bad album, but it is a bit fragmented and some parts, like the spoken and orchestral parts as well as the operatic female vocals, are out of place. This makes the album occasionally come across as overblown and overly bombastic and I am left with the feeling that the band bit off more than they could chew. There are some excellent moments to be found here, but the listener must wait too long for them to arrive and they then pass to quickly.

I think I got most of the Kamelot I need from the previous two albums

SouthSideoftheSky The fifth legacy?

Karma followed on the heels of the great The Fourth Legacy from the previous year. The musical direction remains basically the same as on that fourth album and the band could even be accused of merely following their previously established formula on this album. However, there are also some noteworthy differences. The symphonic or even orchestral aspect of the band's brand of Symphonic Power Metal has become stronger while the very appealing Folk and World-Music influences that, for me, made The Fourth Legacy such a thrilling experience are largely absent or at least pushed forcefully into the background. There are still some oriental and Celtic touches here and there, but these tendencies have largely been overtaken by symphonic bombast. Some may say that this album is more progressive than Kamelot's earlier efforts, but these people might confuse progressive with symphonic. I would rather say that Karma is less progressive especially in that it is less eclectic and thus closer to conventional Symphonic Power Metal. Kamelot still knew how to write good songs however, but Karma adds little to what they already had achieved at the time.

Like the previous album, the present one too starts with a short instrumental by way of introduction. Forever and Wings Of Despair are rather typical Power Metal numbers with catchy melodies and the characteristic rapid dual bass drum attack. The Spell slows things down a little bit with a more traditional Heavy Metal riff and some tasteful synthesizers in the background, this one could have been by late 80's/early 90's Black Sabbath while Roy Khan here sounding very much like Queensrÿche's Geoff Tate. Don't You Cry, based on acoustic guitar and strings, is the first ballad of the album. It is a nice interlude for sure, but the song itself is utterly conventional both musically and lyrically and it lacks the folky and medieval feel of the ballads on The Fourth Legacy.

The title track is the counterpart of Nights Of Arabia from the The Fourth Legacy with its slight "oriental" feel and personally I think this is the first song that is up to par with the previous album's material. It is also one of the more progressive songs here as it moves through both heavy, melodic and more mellow piano-based passages. The Light I Shine On You continues in the same vein, but at this point I feel it is basically more of the same. Temples Of Gold is another ballad - or, perhaps better, semi-ballad - that comes as a relief after the Metal onslaught of the foregoing tracks. This one is thankfully a lot better, and a lot less cheesy, than Don't You Cry, but it is not particularly memorable. Across The Highlands is, on the other hand, another strong track in the vein of Until Kingdom Come from the previous album with a slight Celtic feel.

The album ends with a three-part composition called Elisabeth parts I, II and III. The third and final part is, however, deceptively over ten minutes long while the majority of this time is filled with nothing for no good reason! Discounting this unnecessary silence, this three-part song is overall about 12 minutes long. "Progressiveness" is, of course, never to be measured in song length but this might still be the most ambitious composition by Kamelot (at least up to that point). It does, however, like most of the rest of the album, fit very nicely under the heading of 'Symphonic Power Metal'.

Overall, Karma is a good but quite formulaic album in Kamelot's typical style. For me, this one is less interesting than The Fourth Legacy which remains my favourite Kamelot album.

SouthSideoftheSky New allegiance

Power Metal is certainly not my preferred type of music but Kamelot is not your regular Power Metal band, at least not on The Fourth Legacy. This wonderful album presents an interesting form of symphonic Power Metal infused with Folk, World-Music and Prog influences without coming across as overblown or bombastic. The music of Kamelot has indeed little to do with that of the often cheesy European Power Metal bands. The Fourth Legacy is a dark, serious and quite eclectic affair which shows a band not afraid to branch out into unknown territory but at the same time confident in their chosen direction. The powerful yet passionate vocals of Roy Khan help give Kamelot their own musical identity.

The album opens with a short, expressive instrumental called New Allegiance that leads into The Fourth Legacy in which the line "new allegiance" features in the chorus. The title track is a rather conventional melodic Metal number. Silent Goddess is a bit heavier and also introduces some new sounds into the picture like piano and female(-ish?) backing vocals. Dessert Reign is another short instrumental that introduces the superb Nights Of Arabia. Here the World-Music influence is at its strongest with the predominant far-eastern sounds giving this section of the album a highly appealing oriental sound and feel. The wall of sound is impressive with a high attention to detail without ever coming across as cluttered.

The Shadow Of Uther is another excellent song. The Uther in question is, of course, Uther Pendragon, famous from the legend of King Arthur that has inspired countless of Prog and Metal bands. To go along with the theme of the song there is more of a Celtic/Folk feel to this one with fiddle playing a part - very effective! After this Metal onslaught the time is perfect for a folky, acoustic ballad and this is exactly what we get next with A Sailorman's Hymn. Not many Metal bands can create such delicate ballads and the presence of this lovely piece contributes greatly to making The Fourth Legacy a varied and diverse album. Glory is another exquisite acoustic ballad with a medieval feel that could have been a Blackmore's Night song with the acoustic guitars reminding me of Ritchie Blackmore's playing. Slight Celtic touches return again on other songs, particularly on Until Kingdom Come which features some nice instrumental breaks. The album closes with Lunar Sanctum which is one of the more progressive and less Metal tracks on the album. It constitutes a fine ending to a great and interesting album.

I have not yet heard all of the albums by Kamelot, but among the ones I have heard The Fourth Legacy is my favourite.

SouthSideoftheSky Live flow

This impressive live DVD captures Threshold performing a career-spanning set of songs in front of an appreciative Dutch audience. Every studio album up to and including Critical Mass is represented here and they have very wisely chosen not to let any particular album dominate the set list. Two songs are taken from the classic debut, Wounded Land; two from Psychedelicatessen; three from Extinct Instinct; three from Clone; four from Hypothetical and four from Critical Mass. My favourite Threshold albums are the early ones, especially those two with Damian Wilson on lead vocals, but Andrew McDermott, or "Mac" as he is called, handles the songs originally sung by Wilson and also those by originally sung Glynn Morgan very well.

All the selections here are very good but one of several highlights for me is the short acoustic section in the middle of the set that makes the show varied and lets the viewer catch his breath before another Prog Metal onslaught. The acoustic songs played are Clear and Life Flow, both originally from the Extinct Instinct album. Another highlight is Paradox from the debut on which both the audience and the band are on fire.

The band is in top form throughout with the drummer in particular ponding the drums like a madman! And he never seems to get tired either. Karl Groom may not be much of a show man, but he is a fantastic guitarist and he seems to enjoy himself a lot on stage. Mac is, on the other hand, a show man who moves around a lot on stage and interacts with the audience. He has a strange sense of humour though, telling the audience to shut up and go home and similar rude things! But that's the way he is, I guess.

Overall, I think that the set list is very well balanced and that the band performs their songs with impeccable skill and enthusiasm. There might be some overdubs in the vocals, but not very noticeable. The sound is great. The DVD includes a few extras such as a tour documentary which is interesting to watch once or twice perhaps.

A great live document by a great band!

SouthSideoftheSky Yesterday’s Ideals

Leaving behind the overtly progressive approach of Banquet, Lucifer’s Friend returned once more to a more straightforward Rock sound with Mind Exploding. The album most similar to this one is I’m Just A Rock ’N’ Roll Singer from a couple of years earlier and, like that album, Mind Exploding features shorter and more Rock-based songs. The band still utilizes assorted keyboards, brass and female backing vocals, but all this is more discrete here than on Banquet. The Heavy Metal sound of the first two albums is still absent, however. As I have emphasised in earlier reviews, Metal fans should begin with the band’s first two albums, as those are the only albums by Lucifer’s Friend that are genuinely Metal albums. Mind Exploding is about as Metal as Led Zeppelin or David Coverdale-era Deep Purple, but generally better than those in my opinion. Structurally similar to I’m Just A Rock ’N’ Roll Singer, about half of the material here is very strong and the rest is a little bit too far towards Rock ‘N’ Roll for my tastes. Moonshine Rider is a strong opener and semi-progressive, semi-ballads like Broken Toys and Yesterday’s Ideals are really great songs that wouldn’t be too out of place on the band’s better albums. Blind Boy and Natural Born Mover are straightforward Rock ‘N’ Roll songs with little or nothing to impress. Fugitive is a funky rocker with a nice synthesiser solo, but overall not too interesting. Free Hooker is the album’s longest track and possibly its most progressive and best song. Anyway, the best songs comes at the end with Free Hooker and Yesterday’s Ideals taking pride of place.

Mind Exploding is hardly Lucifer’s Friend’s best album, but neither is it their worst. It is a very good addition to any collection that already holds the essential Banquet, Where There Groupies Killed The Blued and the self-titled debut.

Recommended!

SouthSideoftheSky To hell or to Connaught?

Released one year after the band’s second full length album, The Middle Kingdom, and one year before their third full length album, Folk-Lore, this EP features four tracks, one of which would later be included on the brilliant Folk-Lore. This song is, of course, the outstanding Ride On which features Shane Mac Gowan from The Pouges on guest vocals resulting in an unlikely but wonderful duet with Cruachan’s own Karen Gilligan (plus some more aggressive vocals towards the end by Cruachan leader Keith Fey). Ride On is really a great song that I like a lot, but since it is included on the Folk-Lore album there is no reason to by this EP for the sake of that song alone.

The other three tracks are all good too, however, and this makes this EP a worthwhile purchase. Even if generally less interesting than any of the songs that made it onto Folk-Lore, the songs here are fine Folk Metal songs in the same style as the Folk-Lore material. Maeves March was first featured on the band’s debut from 1995 and is here presented in a re-recorded, much faster, version with far better sound quality. The best song here (apart from Ride On itself), however, is To Hell Or To Connaught? which incorporates at least one traditional Irish Folk melody, also utilized by Cruachan’s idols (and mine) Horslips. Make sure you get Cruachan’s three most recent full length albums (especially their masterpiece Folk-Lore) before you get this EP, but if you have those albums already this is a nice addition to your collection.

SouthSideoftheSky Thus spoke Lucifer’s Friend

As I said in my review of the band’s third album, the Metal purist's interest in Lucifer's Friend is (probably?) limited to the band's two first albums; the Heavy Metal of the self-titled debut and the equally heavy but at the same time very progressive Where The Groupies Killed The Blues. But the present album, though no longer describable as Metal, is nothing short of brilliant! The material here is every bit as strong as on those earlier great albums but it is very different in nature. This great Prog Rock album is filled to the brim with electric pianos, synthesizers, strings and, particularly, brass arrangements in addition to the usual Rock instruments! All the instruments are exceptionally well played and the vocals are simply outstanding. The British lead vocalist John Lawton was later recruited to join Uriah Heep, but the funny thing is that several of Lucifer's Friend’s albums, including the present one, are much better and far more interesting than anything Uriah Heep ever did (with or without Lawton)!

As implied, Banquet is quite different from Lucifer's Friend’s earlier albums. This is less heavy and more jazzy (though not at all in a Jazz-Rock/Fusion way – this is still very much a Rock album. The electric guitars are more concerned with solos than riffs here. Lucifer's Friend were never content to stay within one musical style, but always preferred to move on to new territories with each subsequent album. This is one great album, severely underrated and definitely an excellent addition. The only song that might not be too interesting is the short High-Flying Lady Goodbye.

Metal fans should begin with the excellent Where The Groupies Killed The Blues and the self-titled debut, but Banquet is essential fans of Progressive Rock.

Highly recommended!

SouthSideoftheSky From Heavy Metal to Rock 'N' Roll?

Lucifer's Friend were never content to stay within one musical style, but always preferred to move on to new territories with each subsequent album. While the Metal purist's interest in Lucifer's Friend is restricted to the band's two first albums, more open minded listeners will do well to dig a little bit deeper.

The difference in sound between this and the previous two albums is striking. The dark and heavy approach is left behind here in favour of a more Hard Rock and Rock 'N' Roll style, but still with many progressive aspects. Even the lyrics are considerably more lighthearted. It is fair to say that the present disc is a transitional album between the brilliant, progressive Heavy Metal of Where The Groupies Killed The Blues and the all out Prog Rock (but no longer Metal at all) of Banquet. But while Banquet is an absolutely essential album for any fan of Progressive Rock, I'm Just A Rock 'N' Roll Singer is not essential for anyone apart from fans of this underrated band. However, there are some very good songs here too and the production values are clearly higher.

Needless to say, this album is not the best place to start with Lucifer's Friend. Metal fans should begin with the excellent Where The Groupies Killed The Blues and the self-titled debut.

SouthSideoftheSky "Hail the black redeemer, how long you been away. Caliph of the darkness, I miss you every day"

Did Lucifer's Friend create Heavy Metal with their debut and Prog Metal with this follow-up? Lucifer's Friend is a really interesting German/British band based in Germany. They basically created Heavy Metal pretty much simultaneously (and independently?) of the major bands based in Britain like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep (for which Lucifer's Friend vocalist John Lawton would later sing). And here, already with their second album they go on to a fully progressive approach. Indeed, this album is more sophisticated both musically and lyrically than anything Uriah Heep has ever done. Too bad they remain virtually unknown till this day.

The opening number, Hobo, is great but it is basically a clone of Ride The Sky from the debut. The second and third tracks are nothing short of brilliant, however. The piano intro to Rose On The Vine being particularly excellent as well as the fantastic acoustic guitar solo. The keyboards are very well played and varied. We find lots of piano, organ, electric piano, Moog synthesizer and Mellotron. Some of the piano-heavy passages remind me of early Queen (first two albums). We also find lots of acoustic guitars and even string arrangements. The guitarist is also very skilled and the electric and acoustic guitar solos are often very short and snappy. No long mindless jam sessions here!

The closer Burning Ships should have been a radio Prog Rock classic like Emerson Lake & Palmer's Lucky Man or Kansas' Dust In The Wind. It would have deserved that!

It should be pointed out that John Lawton is a native Brit and there is nothing of that horrible German accent (sorry all Germans! I have my own accent to tackle) in his vocals at all. And his vocals here are terrific - almost like a young Freddie Mercury at times! Also, there is no sign at all of the fact that this band is German; this music has nothing to do with the Krautrock genre. Lucifer's Friend could indeed have been a fully British band judging from the sound (perhaps they should have been a British band in order to get more attention?)

One sad thing, though, is that the sound quality of this album is not very good. It is decent, but not even slightly better than the debut album. Many Prog Rock fans might prefer to start with the album Banquet, but for Metal fans Where The Groupies Killed The Blues is the best and, in my opinion, Lucifer's Friend's masterpiece.

An extremely underrated masterpiece!

SouthSideoftheSky Any friend of Lucifer's is a friend of mine

To say that this album (and this band) is underrated is something of an understatement. This debut album came out in 1970, the same year as Black Sabbath's debut, the same year as Deep Purple's In Rock, Led Zeppelin's third as well as Uriah Heep's debut - and it sounds absolutely fresh and forward-looking considering the year of release. Hence, this German/British band must have invented Heavy Metal pretty much simultaneously (and independently?) of these more well-known mastodons of early Metal (or Proto-Metal, if you like). And that is quite impressive, I think! But who ever talks about Lucifer's Friend now? Sadly, no too many.

For listening pleasure this is not too bad either, and it is even up to par with some of the more famous bands I mentioned above! This debut is not be the best album by Lucifer's Friend, however. Their second album is even better! But this debut is more important for historical reasons. Had this album been released a couple of years later it could perhaps have been dismissed as a good clone of other bands, but this was released in 1970, after all. Anyone with an interest in the early development of heavy music, and heavy progressive music in particular, should not miss out on this album. Indeed, this is essential listening!

The vocals are very good, and the guitars and keyboards are well played and not at all sloppy like many early Heavy Metal contemporaries. Ride In The Sky, Everybody's Clown and the title track are all great songs.

SouthSideoftheSky Innocence faded rapidly

Third studio album and already running out of steam! In my opinion, Dream Theater never again came even remotely close to making such a brilliant album as Images And Words and Awake already sounds much less interesting to these ears. Having that said, there are indeed some great songs on this album too. For some reason I have never been able to enjoy the album opener 6:00, however. Maybe it is the spoken word samples that annoy me. My favourites here being Caught In A Web and Innocence Faded, particularly the former. The organ-heavy instrumental Erotomania is also very good with its Yngwie Malmsteen-like Neo-Classical guitar extravaganza towards the end, but I can’t help feel that the track is a bit too long for its own good and the main riff is not strong enough to be repeated as many times as it is. This leads straight into Voices, which even if a good song feels distinctively subpar in comparison with the Images And Words album, and the same goes for Awake as a whole. The nice acoustic ballad The Silent Man offers a chance to catch your breath, but it is a totally unremarkable and ordinary song. These three songs (Erotomania, Voices and The Silent Man) supposedly make up a suite titled A Mind Beside Itself, but the three parts sound very much like wholly independent songs to me.

The Mirror picks things up again with a Metallica-like riff and continues with Lie that shares some common themes, but again I feel like I’m hearing more of the same. The riffs and melodies fail to grip me and at this point I’m losing interest rapidly. Lifting Shadows Off A Dream sounds very much like a U2 song apart from the middle section. Scarred is the album’s longest track. It has some decent parts, but overall I find it overlong and a bit dull. Space-Dye Vest, which is based on a rather simplistic piano line, concludes the album.

A year later saw the release of the A Change Of Seasons EP, and it has always been my firm opinion that Awake could have been an extremely much better album had they replaced at least half of its songs with the great 20 minute plus Change Of Seasons track! That would have made a good album, but even then far behind Images And Words.

As it stands however, Awake is simply not among Dream Theater’s better albums and it is a very disappointing follow-up to Images And Words.

SouthSideoftheSky Dream Theater's last stand

It is almost unbelievable that Dream Theater could expel such a great composition as Change Of Seasons to an EP bound to get fewer listeners than a proper album, while releasing such a disappointing album as Awake around the same time. It has always been my firm opinion that Awake could have been extremely much better had they replaced at least half of its songs with the Change Of Seasons track! Or did they really think that the Awake material was better than this!? It puzzles me.

In my opinion, Dream Theater never again came even remotely close to making such a brilliant album as Images And Words. But outside of that album, the Change Of Seasons track is the closest they ever came to approximating the brilliance of the Images And Words material. It is definitely by far the best 20 minute plus piece they have ever made and a classic of Progressive Metal.

This EP is a very weird release overall, however. It is rightly regarded as an EP even though it has a running time close to an hour. The reason is that half of it consists of covers recorded live while the title track is the sole original studio recording. I usually don't rate EPs; I usually don't like studio/live combination albums and I usually don't enjoy cover albums very much. Add to this that I usually don't like Dream Theater very much(!). But apart from these "obstacles", I really enjoy the whole of this EP even though it is rather incoherent.

The live covers are fun! Such unlikely artists as Elton John, Dixie Dregs, Journey, Queen and Pink Floyd get covered together with the usual suspects such as Kansas, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. When I heard this for the first time I had never heard the original version of Funeral For A Friend. I didn't even know that it was an Elton John until I investigated it further. Imagine my surprise when I found out who it was! The original by Elton John is really good and an excellent choice for a cover version. Dixie Dregs was another band I had never heard before. I like them too now, and I thank Dream Theater for introducing me to them.

I guess that Dream Theater were doing a good thing here, introducing these older bands and artists to a supposedly younger audience. And even if I'm normally not very fond of Dream Theater's own music, I have to say that they have excellent taste in other people's music! So even if I'm not really a Dream Theater fan, I consider them as fellow fans of Kansas, Deep Purple, Queen, etc. some of my favourite bands of all time.

I'm giving this strange EP three and a half stars. But I really think that the very good Change Of Seasons track had been better off on a proper album together with some more original studio material.

SouthSideoftheSky “Yes, we can make a few tweaks – yes, we will create some freaks”

Threshold once again lost Damian Wilson who left the band for the second time after their last album Extinct Instinct. In my view, the two albums Wilson sings on, Wounded Land and Extinct Instinct, are Threshold's best with the latter being my #1 favourite. But Clone is another strong album that introduced new singer Andrew McDermott (or Mac as he is often called?) which was the band's third singer in four albums. Like Glynn Morgan who sang on Psychedelicatessen, McDermott has a strong voice but hardly as distinctive as that of Damian Wilson. Overall, the musical direction of Clone is perhaps closer to that of Psychedelicatessen than to the other two I have mentioned. I find this one a bit less progressive and also slightly less diverse compared to the three previous albums. The sound is also less dynamic with keyboards playing a somewhat lesser role here. But, on the other hand, it is filled with strong riffs and melodies flawlessly performed and recorded.

Like the debut, Wounded Land, Clone too is a concept album. This time they want to tell us about the supposed dangers of genetic engineering. While the lyrics are certainly less naïve and “preachy” here compared to the debut, the ideological view presented is, again, a bit questionable in my view. Personally, I think that those who are overly sceptical of the abilities of genetic engineering are often not very well educated about the science and tend to greatly exaggerate the risks involved. But the lyrics do not distract me here in the way they did on Wounded Land. Anyway, this is an enjoyable set of moderately progressive Heavy Metal songs revolving around this theme. Black Sabbath-like guitar riffs and highly melodic verses and choruses are still the backbone of Threshold's sound. And it works well!

Clone is one of Threshold’s better albums, but not up to the standard set by the previous Extinct Instinct which constituted the band's peak in my opinion

SouthSideoftheSky Never mix food and music!

Jokes aside, this is a surprisingly good Deep Purple album. Only the cover art is abysmal, nothing about the music is. Not at all! House Of Pain kicks off the album at a high pace, and Deep Purple still got it. The heavy Sun Goes Down almost sounds like Black Sabbath in places. Haunted has grand piano, orchestration and female background vocals which is very surprising, and it really works!

I will not mention all the songs here, but I must point out that this is one of the most varied albums Deep Purple has ever made. Haunted is not the only track that is slower than what we are used to. The atmospheric closer Contact Lost, the bluesy ballad Walk On and the folky acoustic Never A Word are also in a slower mode than usual for this band. A blues ballad might not be too surprising though, but the latter song is a big surprise. And it is excellent! It features a great vocal melody and some quiet harpsichord (- ish) keyboards in the background. Beautiful!

The rest of the album is pretty straightforward Deep Purple material, but energized and not tired and old like on many of their more recent albums. Don Airay has replaced Jon Lord here, and that might be a factor that re-energized the band. Surprisingly, Airey sounds very much like Lord. I have always liked Airey (he worked with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore and many others), but he never sounded like this before. Steve Morse guitar work is great (as always), and the older members are somehow re-vitalized by the “youngsters”.

Fans of classic Deep Purple will not be disappointed by this album.

Go Bananas!

SouthSideoftheSky “What are a couple of nice tracks like you doing in a place like this?”

After the disaster that was Slaves And Masters which had seen Joe Lynn Turner join replace Ian Gillan, Gillan returned once more to the band for The Battle Rages On. And indeed, the battle rages on here quite literally! That is, the internal “battle” between Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan. They were at each other’s throats constantly, or so I’ve understood. Still they managed to make one last album together. After this one, Blackmore would leave the band for good to be replaced by Steve Morse who is with the band to this day.

Anya is definitely one of my all time favourite Deep Purple songs of all time and the title track here is also excellent! These two songs are easily up to par with, or above, anything from the strong Perfect Strangers album released almost ten years before this one. Solitaire is a decent song too, but the rest is rather mediocre or at least very middle-of-the-road, Deep Purple by-the-numbers. Anya reminds me of the similarly excellent Rainbow song Ariel that would be featured on Rainbow’s last ever album Stranger In Us All before Ritchie would leave the world of Hard Rock forever to form the Folk Rock/Pop band Blackmore’s Night with his wife Candice Night. The acoustic intro is wonderful. The title track is a Perfect Strangers-like song with a strong, heavy riff.

Compared with Slaves And Masters, this was clearly a major improvement and The Battle Rages On still stands as one of the best Deep Purple albums recorded with both Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan present after the classic period of the 70’s and, I would say, it even competes with some albums from that era! Still, there are shortcomings that put this album well behind the Perfect Strangers album.

Tracks such as Lick It Up, Talk About Love, Twist In The Tale are unimaginative both musically and lyrically and leave me wondering if they were really running out of ideas rapidly.

I think that we can safely conclude that Gillan and Blackmore are better off apart. Another chapter of Deep Purple-history is closed.

SouthSideoftheSky It says Deep Purple on the cover, but it sure sounds like Joe Lynn Turner-era Rainbow!

I really don't like Joe Lynn Turner; I don't like what he did to Rainbow, I don't like what he did to Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force and I don't like what he did to Deep Purple. Turner's voice lends itself very well to slick AOR, but not to Metal of any kind. The real blame must, however, fall on Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover for bringing Turner with them from Rainbow into Deep Purple and also on Jon Lord and Ian Paice for allowing it all to happen! What were they trying to do? Turn Deep Purple into 80’s-era Rainbow? What was the point of that? I’m a big fan of Ronnie James Dio-era Rainbow, but the Joe Lynn Turner-era of that band I find very disappointing. But even those worst Rainbow albums are superior to this “Deep Purple” album. Had Slaves And Masters been released in the mid-80’s, straight after Rainbow’s Bent Out Of Shape album, it would perhaps have been understandable. But to do this Rainbow clone in 1990 after the first reunion that resulted in Perfect Strangers and later House Of Blue Light is strange to say the least.

I will not comment of each individual track here as they all sound pretty much the same to my ears. And if you have heard the 80’s Rainbow albums, you know just what this sounds like (only worse!). However, the closing track Wicked Ways is the best song here having a symphonic touch and with a bit more room left for instrumental work outs. For the rest of the songs, Blackmore, Lord, Glover, Paice and Turner seem to be on autopilot and lacking in inspiration. Not surprisingly, this line-up was a one-off and for the next album Ian Gillan would return once more and the battle raged on…

Had this been a Rainbow album – it sure sounds like one – it would have been the worst Rainbow album. Now, it will have to be deemed the worst Deep Purple album instead!

Avoid!

SouthSideoftheSky They broke the unwritten law

After the reunion album that was Perfect Strangers it took Deep Purple three years to release a follow-up in The House Of Blue Light. It is often agreed by all hands that this album was a disappointment after the very good Perfect Strangers, and while I certainly agree with that sentiment I wouldn’t say that The House Of Blue Light is a downright awful album. Rather, I would say that it stands up rather well alongside some earlier (and later) not-so-good albums like Who Do We Think We Are and the albums from the David Coverdale-era. My biggest problem with this album is that the songs are a bit simpler and not much room is left for soloing; attempts are made to be “catchier” and you might suppose they were trying to have a hit single at this point? But the again, many other bands did much worse such attempts!

The production here is almost a bit slick too which contrasts radically with the often raw and under-produced albums of the early 70’s. I think they got it exactly right on Perfect Strangers, but here they might have went a little bit too far in terms of high production values and the result might be just a little bit too "glossy" for Deep Purple.

The best songs come toward the end of the album with Spanish Archer and particularly Strangeways being worthy of special mention. Here Blackmore and Lord are finally allowed to stretch out on their instruments a bit. Lord uses more synthesisers than usual in addition to piano and his classic organ sound on this album; they are mostly in the background adding texture and they do not sound cheesy like so many other synthesisers in the 80's.

In many ways House Of Blue Light is actually your typical and average Deep Purple album. It is hardly among their best, but not their very worst either. The riffs and melodies are all decent, but I miss something truly memorable here, something that stands out. This is just Deep Purple-by-the-numbers.

A rather weak Deep Purple album overall with only a few worthwhile moments

SouthSideoftheSky “How many tears must we cry before learning, things that we have they’re for real and we’re losing”

Forbidden is to date the last Black Sabbath studio album and followed one year after Cross Purposes which had seen the return of singer Tony Martin. For Forbidden, drummer extraordinaire Cozy Powell also comes back as well as bassist Neal Murray which means that this is the exact same line-up that did TYR five years previously. In terms of quality and style however, these two albums are as far away from each other as you can imagine. While TYR belongs to my all time favourites, Forbidden is one of the least good Black Sabbath albums ever! Still, I don’t think it is quite as bad as many people say. There are some nice moments here as well but hardly enough to stop this from being a rather sad ending of Black Sabbath's recording career (but let’s hope there will be further albums in the future).

While I have the greatest respect and admiration for all of these people here including keyboard player Geoff Nichols and, of course, Mr. Black Sabbath himself Tony Iommi, I must say that this is a very weak final statement by one of my favourite line-ups of one of my favourite bands. It is particularly sad to note that this album was to be one of the amazing Cozy Powell's last recordings ever before he passed away in 1998.

The album opens with Illusion Of Power which features a guest spot by Ice T that depending on your definition might perhaps be characterized as something of a “Rap”, but it is really best described as a spoken word passage. Regardless of what you call it, it is a bit out of place here. Forbidden is not the first Black Sabbath album to feature a guest artist. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath featured Rick Wakeman of Yes on keyboards on one track and Headless Cross featured a guitar solo by Brian May of Queen on one track. The nature and pedigree of each of these guests pretty much represents the credentials of the respective album they participated in! From the greats Rick Wakeman and Brian May to Ice T indicates how far the band had sunk at this time and how desperate they were to fit into the contemporary musical climate of the mid 90’s. They brought in Ice T’s band mate Ernie C to produce the album.

Shaking Off The Chains, Get A Grip and Illusion Of Power all have respectable riffs. Can't Get Close Enough is slower and has more memorable verses; this is one of the album's highlights for me together with the closer Kiss Of Death which features a strong vocal by Martin and characteristic heavy drums of Powell. I Won't Cry For You has a surprisingly anthemic chorus for Black Sabbath and this is another pretty good song but hardly something out of the ordinary. It is with songs like Guilty As Hell and Sick And Tired the album sinks below average with generic riffs and middle-of-the-road sound. These songs are quite dull and wholly standard Hard Rock songs without any redeeming features. Rusty Angels picks things up slightly with a half decent chorus, but the lyrics are rather cheesy and there is nothing really memorable about the song. The title track is decent, but again totally unremarkable.

Like with the horrible Born Again album from the early 80's the weaknesses of Forbidden lies both in the uninspired song writing and some misguided musical ideas. However, there are a few decent moments here and I actually rate this higher than both Born Again and Dehumanizer. Still, this album is for fans and collectors only, but some of these might enjoy some moments of this album to some degree at least.

SouthSideoftheSky Back to Eden? Well, not quite…

After three very musically (though not necessarily commercially) successful albums with Tony Martin on vocals (The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross and TYR), Tony Iommi decided to kick Martin as well as bassist Neal Murray and later also drummer Cozy Powell out of the band to make room for the reunion of the Mob Rules-line up with Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler and Vinnie Appice. This was, in my opinion, a very bad move that gave rise to the disastrous Dehumanizer album. After this one-off reunion with Ronnie Dio, however, Black Sabbath once again found themselves without a singer and Martin was asked to rejoin the band which he agreed to. Dio took drummer Vinnie Appice with him, so there was also a need for a new drummer. I don’t know if Cozy Powell was asked to return or not at this point, but if he was he must have declined since Bobby Rondinelli was brought in here to fill the drum slot. Powell did however return to the band for the next album, Forbidden. Original member Geezer Butler remained from the Dio-reunion and keyboards are as usual handled by Geoff Nichols.

This resulted in Cross Purposes. While this is a good album and a major improvement over Dehumanizer, they never managed to recapture the magic of earlier Tony Martin-fronted albums. About what would have happened had the Dio-reunion never materialized and Martin had been allowed to stay in the band, we can only speculate. But maybe it was the changing musical trends of the 90’s rather than the rapid changes of vocalists that shaped the sound of Cross Purposes? You might describe it as a meeting half-way between the excellent Headless Cross and the disappointing Dehumanizer both in terms of quality and in terms of style. Like on Dehumanizer, they once again try to sound contemporary and adapt somewhat to the musical climate of the early 90’s but on Cross Purposes they do this without leaving behind too much of their musical history. Given that this was in fact their goal this album is a success, but I can’t help feel that some of the magic of the late 80’s albums was lost here. Thus I do not see Cross Purposes as a return to the form of TYR and Headless Cross.

While there are no bad songs as such here, it is not always easy to identify the stand-out tracks. Cross Of Thorns is one of the highlights for sure, however, with its acoustic passages alternating with a melodic vocal over a heavy riff. Dying For Love is something of a power ballad very similar to Feels Good To Me from the TYR album but less good in my opinion. The rest of the songs are rather typical Black Sabbath songs based on rather paradigm Iommi guitar riffs. Had this been released by another band I might have been more impressed, but I require more of Sabbath.

This album is a recommended addition to any Black Sabbath collection that already holds the much better The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross and TYR albums.

SouthSideoftheSky Not particularly psychedelic, despite the title!

Psychedelicatessen is quite different from the rest of Threshold's albums. Comparing it to the two albums that surrounded it - Wounded Land and Extinct Instinct - it is indeed not entirely out of place to wonder whether this really is the same band! One major factor here is that both of these two other albums had Damian Wilson on vocals, while Psychedelicatessen is the sole Threshold album with Glynn Morgan handling those duties. While not as distinctive as Wilson, Morgan is a fine vocalist that does a good job here. But the vocals are not the only thing that sets Psychedelicatessen apart from Wounded Land and Extinct Instinct. This one has a heavier sound and has much less of the Neo-Prog tendencies of those other albums.

Having recently reviewed albums (for Prog Archives) by the Neo-Prog band Shadowland, I was reminded of Threshold because of the presence of guitarist Karl Groom in both these bands. Groom is (I discovered just now), however, not the only member these bands have in common. Also drummer Nick Herradence was a member of both of these bands. But despite this overlap in terms of personnel, anyone looking for musical connections between the two bands would be hard pressed to find any on this album. Comparing Psychedelicatessen with Shadowland's Through The Looking Glass (that was released the very same year and involves both Groom and Herradence) the difference in musical style and approach is striking. The Neo-Prog tendencies that were displayed on Threshold's first album (and to some extent also on Extinct Instinct) are almost wholly absent here. Psychedelicatessen is possibly Threshold's heaviest and least melodic album. I'm not saying that this is not melodic, just that there is more focus on riffs than on melodies. Also, Psychedelicatessen is perhaps less overtly progressive.

It took longer for me to get into this album compared to the other Threshold albums I mentioned, and with every listen I'm enjoying Psychedelicatessen a bit more. It sometimes reminds me of Black Sabbath's 90's albums, particularly Cross Purposes that was released the same year. The music is riff-based and the solos and instrumental breaks alternate between guitars and keyboards. They obviously know how to play their instruments, but despite their talents they often come across as slightly anonymous on this album. The sound they produce lacks a strong identity of its own.

There is a decent balance between aggressive and mellow moments and between riffs, melodies and instrumental work outs. Under The Sun is a pleasant Symphonic ballad based on piano, acoustic guitar and some flute-like keyboards and as such stands out from the other songs. There are no songs that stand out as really excellent, but there is also nothing really weak here. I would not recommend starting your investigation of Threshold with this album. Both Wounded Land and Extinct Instinct are better albums in my opinion.

A good album, but not essential

SouthSideoftheSky “There’s a bullet out there with your name on, but there’s no one out there with a gun”

Tony Martin first unleashed his distinctive voice on us on Black Sabbath’s Eternal Idol album in 1987. This was really a critical point for the band and Martin contributed to putting the band back on its feet again. For me, the underrated Martin-era actually produced some of the finest Black Sabbath albums. Martin first stayed with Black Sabbath for a further couple of albums - Headless Cross and TYR - before he was kicked out of the band to make room for the reunion with Ronnie James Dio that gave rise to Dehumanizer. During this time Martin recorded his first solo album Back Where I Belong which was released in 1992. After the reunion with Ronnie Dio, Martin was asked to rejoin Black Sabbath which he agreed to and this resulted in Cross Purposes and later on Forbidden. The latter was released in 1995 and is to date the last Black Sabbath album. Though he did sing on other people’s albums and occasionally participated in some different projects, it wasn’t until ten years after Forbidden that we got another proper solo album from Martin: 2005’s Scream. The vocals are distinctively Tony Martin and he has lost nothing of his vocal power during his near ten year absence from the music business.

Impressively, Martin himself does not only provide all the material and the lead vocals but also plays most of the instruments as well as produces the album! The keyboards are handled by long-standing Black Sabbath collaborator Geoff Nichols who, despite not always having been considered a full member of the band, played on all Black Sabbath albums from 1980’s Heaven And Hell onwards, as well as following the band on tours. The guitar credits are shared between Martin himself and a Joe Harford which is, as far as I’ve understood, Martin’s son. The drums are also credited to Martin himself, but there is a drum track by the late great Cozy Powell on the opening track. Martin also plays bass and violin!

Musically, Scream builds heavily on Martin’s Black Sabbath days, particularly The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross and TYR. But there is also a Deep Purple influence with a strong presence of Hammond-like keyboards in some songs. The songs are generally very good with a few weaker tracks keeping the album from a higher rating. Raising Hell reputedly started out as a song idea that was proposed by Geoff Nichols for Black Sabbath during the recording of TYR but rejected by the band. It is a nice opening song and you can recognize Cozy’s distinctive drum sound in it as well as a Jon Lord-like organ solo. Bitter Sweet features a heavy Tony Iommi-like riff that could have been a left-over from any of the Martin-era Sabbath albums. Faith In Madness too could well have come from a Sabbath album alternating between acoustic-sounding passages and heavy riffing. These are all good songs! I’m Gonna Live Forever, on the other hand, is the first low point of the album with a rather tedious and repetitive chorus.

The title track is more Deep Purple-like with a Hammond-heavy sound. This one also features a violin solo. Surely Love Is Dead is one of the highlights of the albums for me with a lot of things happening within the song including a very nice acoustic guitar solo. The Kids Of Today (Don’t Understand The Blues) is sadly an embarrassment that best should have been left off the album. The melody is overly simple and driven by a badly sounding synthesiser and the lyrics are extremely cheesy trying to deride contemporary music. While I certainly agree with the sentiments expressed it doesn’t come across very well at all.

Wherever You Go is a lovely acoustic ballad based on moving vocals, acoustic guitar and some symphonic keyboards in the background. This song sets the stage for the closer, Field Of Lies, which is another Black Sabbath-like song.

Scream is a recommended buy for anyone who is a fan of the Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath albums.

SouthSideoftheSky Hardly his “magnum opus”, but a return with “vengeance”

The discography of Yngwie J. Malmsteen is an uneven one, alternating between works that are surprisingly strong and works that almost perfectly lives up to his bad reputation! Magnum Opus is one of the good ones and clearly better than the disappointing Seventh Sign. The worst Pop/Hair Metal excesses of some previous albums are thankfully largely absent here and he once again concentrates on the Neo-Classical Metal he became famous for in the first place. There is also a Power Metal influence in some songs with strong melodies. The vocals are once again handled by Michael Vescera who is one of the best vocalists Malmsteen ever had. On keyboards we have Mats Olausson who provides a tasteful symphonic backdrop on many of the songs, the flashy keyboard solos of Jens Johansson is however sadly a thing of the past.

The album opens with a Vengeance (literally!) and continues with some highly melodic and almost catchy songs. The material is overall not as strong as on the Fire & Ice album, but Magnum Opus is a bit more consistent than that album. The best tracks come mostly in the second half of the album beginning with the excellent, strongly Neo-Classical instrumental Overture 1622 and continues with the semi-progressive Voodoo featuring one of the heaviest guitar riffs in Malmsteen’s career. Time Will Tell reminds of Pyramid Of Cheops from Seventh Sign in that it features Yngwie on Sitar and a strong vocal by Vescera, but it is not as good as the great Pyramid Of Cheops. Fire In The Sky is a typical Malmsteen number that could have come from Trilogy or Marching Out. It is hardly groundbreaking stuff, but very likable after all. Had this album offered more of the same I’m sure that I would have begun to tire of it at this point, but wisely the album does not outstay its welcome and settles for a shorter running time than usual. The album ends with a great instrumental piece called Dawn that leaves me with a good feeling about the album.

Different versions feature different bonus tracks, mine has a bonus track called Tournament which is another instrumental.

A good, but not essential album

SouthSideoftheSky Perfect title track

Ian Gillan just came from working with Black Sabbath on the awful Born Again album. Ritchie Blackmore came from Rainbow where he had just made a series of quite horrible albums with Joe Lynn Turner on vocals. Perfect Strangers brings the two of them together again and they produce something a lot better. Indeed, Perfect Strangers is one of Deep Purple's best ever albums!

The sound quality is far superior to the often badly recorded 60's and early 70's albums. The songs are melodic and strong and the album is reasonably varied in terms of moods and tempos. The instrumental work is great on many tracks. I especially like A Gypsy's Kiss which has a very Neo-Classical instrumental break reminding of the great Burn title track. Perfect Strangers itself is also a truly excellent song. Wasted Sunsets slows the tempo down and it is great as well. Some lyrics are quite cheesy, but not totally unimaginative like many Hard Rock lyrics.

This album constituted a great come back for the band! And in many ways it is a more mature effort than many of their earlier works.

Recommended!

SouthSideoftheSky Band of brothers

This album is the first out of three albums that the two brothers, keyboardist Jens and drummer Anders Johansson, made together under the "original" name of 'The Johansson Brothers'. For those of you who don't know the history of these guys, they both used to play in Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force in the 80's. They have also made an album together with famous Jazz-Rock/Fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth as well as collaborated with such diverse artists as Ginger Baker, Ronnie James Dio and Mike Romeo of Symphony X. Jens has also played keyboards on many bands' and artists' albums including Blackmore's Night, Kamelot and he is a member of Stratovarius. The musical interests of the two brothers extend to experimental Jazz-Rock/Fusion, Prog Metal, Power Metal, (Neo-)Classical, World Music and more.

The present album is more in the Deep Purple category but with some progressive aspects. The Johansson brothers are obviously very skilled on their respective instruments and not surprisingly the sound is strongly dominated by keyboards and drums but there are also bass and guitars. There are a couple of instrumentals, but most of the tracks have vocals. The keyboards are mainly organ, synthesisers, some piano and (something that sounds like) a harpsichord (even if I'm pretty sure that it is produced with electronic keyboards). The vocals are very bluesy and almost soulful and would fit in nicely in any classic bluesy Hard Rock band. As I said, Deep Purple might come to mind, but the music here is much more melodic during the vocal parts and much more progressive and jazzy during the instrumental parts. Most of the songs are based on melody and not on instrumental workout. Most of the many keyboard solos are appropriate within the context of the songs and never too excessive. This is not at all an album concerned just with showing off chops.

The last track is a cover of The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations played in Deep Purple style with an organ solo. The song itself is about five and a half minute, but the track runs to over 21 minutes of silence with some noise at the very end. So don't expect an "epic" here!

Compared to the other two albums they did, Sonic Winter and especially The Last Viking, this debut is slightly immature. This first album has been made available as a two-for-one 2CD release together with Sonic Winter. This is probably the best way to get this album and both are good albums. However, the present one is the least good one among the three Johansson Brothers albums.

SouthSideoftheSky Keyboard-driven Metal

This album is the second one out of three that the two brothers, keyboardist Jens and drummer Anders Johansson, made together. For those of you who don't know the history of these guys, they both used to play in Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force in the 80's. Malmsteen also plays on this album as a guest, which is very interesting considering that this is a different kind of music compared to that of Rising Force. The Johansson brothers have a very wide set of musical influences that stretches far beyond the boundaries of Metal music. This can be seen on their (especially Jens') extremely diverse output, much of which is far from Metal. The influences on this particular album, however, include keyboard-heavy Deep Purple-like Rock, Neo-Classical Metal, some Jazz Fusion as well as classic bluesy Hard Rock. Overall, you might put this in the Prog Rock/Metal category.

The Johansson brothers are obviously very skilled on their respective instruments and the guitar shredding of Malmsteen is clearly recognizable, but quite sparse as he appears only in a couple of the songs. The overall sound is strongly dominated by keyboards, drums, bass and vocals with some guitar solos (not all played by Malmsteen). The keyboards are mainly organ, synthesizers, some piano and (something that sounds like) a harpsichord.

The vocals are very bluesy and almost soulful and would fit in any classic bluesy hard rock band. Deep Purple might come to mind, but the music on Sonic Winter is more melodic during the vocal parts and more progressive and jazzy in the instrumental parts. The longer tracks are instrumentals and consist mainly of some very good instrumental workout. Still, this is not an album concerned just with showing off chops. The shorter songs are based on melody and not on instrumental workout. Most of the many keyboard solos are appropriate within the context of the songs and never too excessive.

There is here a nice balance between bluesy Hard Rock/Metal songs with some quirks, and more experimental instrumentals. I would say that this album is a clear improvement over the first self-titled one. These two albums are now available together in a two-on-one double CD release. While I think that the third more Power Metal-like album The Last Viking (that features Mike Romeo of Symphony X on guitars) is even stronger, the present album is a very good and underrated one too.

Recommended!

SouthSideoftheSky The very wild rover

Cruachan are a totally unique band that mixes traditional Celtic music and Irish Folk (Rock) with Metal music. The styles of Metal involved are themselves very varied and ranges from traditional Heavy Metal to Symphonic Metal to more extreme forms of Metal. Cruachan has been around since the early 90’s and they have a pre-history that spans back to the 80’s; they were the pioneers of what has become known as Celtic Metal. However, this label somewhat disguises how diverse and eclectic the band is.

Compared to the previous album Pagan, The Morrigan’s Call is of a higher sonic quality; it is better produced and more layers and details become apparent in the sound. There are also more keyboards with harpsichords in particular giving the music a medieval sound. Otherwise there are a plethora of traditional Celtic string, wind and percussion instruments that provides a very interesting sound together with the ordinary Rock/Metal instruments; guitars, bass, drums and vocals.

The vocals are well-balanced between male and female lead vocals and between clean and growling vocals. I am normally not a fan of growling, but there is not that much of it here and when it is present it fits and it balances the other vocal elements well. Compared to Pagan, there are more of those pure electric Folk Rock elements that were also present on the brilliant Folk-Lore album. The Great Hunger has a heavy riff that sound like it comes from a classic Black Sabbath album but with fiddles added to great effect.

Like Pagan, The Morrigan’s Call was also an album that required several listens before I began to fully appreciate it. On the first few listens, the music here might sound somewhat disjointed, which is particularly true of the open track Shelob which mixes extreme Metal growls with a cheerful folky melody with clean female vocals. Over further listens, however, intelligent arrangements start to reveal themselves and The Morrigan’s Call is another grower. I now think it is as good as Pagan and in some, but not all, respects even better!

Cruachan is a much underrated band that deserves much more attention from both Metal fans and fans of Folk Rock and Prog Rock. Highly recommended!

SouthSideoftheSky “He's a clown that we put down, he's a man that doesn't fit, he's a king but not in this town, to you and me he's a renegade”

Thin Lizzy is not one of my favourite bands but I used to like them a lot more when I was younger. Ironically, Renegade is actually an album I like a lot more now than I ever did, even back then when I was actually much more into the band! One reason for this might be that I bought a whole bunch of Thin Lizzy albums at the same time and maybe I never gave Renegade proper attention. Another reason might be that Renegade was one of the last albums I got and when I finally got it I was already beginning to tire of band and moving on to other things. Anyway, I don’t have any particular memories of this album from back when first heard it, at least not of any positive character, and in hearing it again now many years later, I was a bit surprised in a rather positively way. I was expecting a rather weak album but actually found one of my current favourite Thin Lizzy albums! Still, I cannot rate this very highly despite some strong moments. While this is hardly groundbreaking music, when judged within the vast Thin Lizzy catalogue Renegade holds up well.

The Metal-credentials of the album (and the band in general) are, however, a bit questionable. But some of the songs are properly considered Metal, like the great opener Angel Of Death for example. This song starts with a synthesiser and strongly reminds me of the intro to Rainbow’s brilliant Tarot Woman. The title track, on the other hand, is more in Dire Straits territory. But a good song! Most of the rest is pretty standard Thin Lizzy material which makes me feel that this is a rather front-loaded album with the best songs at the beginning. The Pressure Will Blow, while overall not a very interesting song, has wonderful lead guitar work of the kind that made Thin Lizzy famous. Leave This Town speeds things up and this one too has good guitar work, but ultimately it is a rather weak song with a tedious chorus. The same can be said about Hollywood (Down On Your Luck) and No One Told Him.

The funky Fats is unusual but not really my cup of tea. The line about Sigmund Freud is funny, but rather incomprehensible! The “Mexicana” of Mexican Blood, on the other hand, though probably not something that I enjoyed ten years ago, I now quite like! I think that Thin Lizzy was at their best when they mixed their Hard Rock with other influences such as Irish Folk music and Americana. Phil Lynnot drew inspiration from the traditional music of his Irish homeland and he also had a fascination for America.

Far from great, but above decent

SouthSideoftheSky “The preach about love, or so I am told”

With Pagan, Cruachan continues to provide us with their inspired and unique fusion of traditional Celtic Folk music and Metal. Compared to the previous Folk-Lore, Pagan has much more of Keith Fay’s aggressive vocals but these are delightfully alternated with the clean vocals of Karen Gilligan and almost every song is a duet between the two. While I liked Folk-Lore on my first listen, I did not at first like the present album; but it has grown on me a lot and now I consider it to be almost as brilliant as Folk-Lore. Many Metal fans would probably prefer the present album since it is admittedly more of a Metal album, but no less Celtic! The symphonic elements are still present as well which makes for a distinctive sound and approach by these pioneers of Celtic Metal.

The production of Pagan is less than perfect, or so I initially felt. But after a few listens I stopped being bothered by the (apparently) weak production and came to realize that this is probably how the band intended it to sound. The closer The Fall Of Gondolin which first appeared on the band’s debut album from 1995 sounds much better here and is one of the several highlights of this album. Overall, Pagan flows very well from beginning till end and many songs share a common theme; namely, liberation from foreign powers throughout the ages, in particular Irish liberation from be it Vikings, Christians or the British.

Some Say The Devil Is Dead is different from the other songs in that it is more of a Folk Punk song! I guess that a whole album full of such songs would be of minimal interest to me, but within the context of the other songs here it actually adds something of positive value. This all makes for another interesting album from Cruachan that deserves much more attention from the Metal community and also from fans of Prog and Folk Rock.

Highly recommended in addition to the, in my opinion, even better Folk-Lore album

SouthSideoftheSky The rocky road to Dublin

The pioneers of Celtic Metal unleashed their masterpiece in 2002 with Folk-Lore. Even though the Irish Folk Metal band was formed in the early 90’s and has a pre-history that spans back to the late 80’s, Folk-Lore was only their third album. And this album constituted a major improvement over the previous two.

Cruachan are a totally unique band that mixes traditional Celtic/Irish Folk music with Metal music. The styles of Metal are themselves varied and while their debut album combined Celtic Folk music with Black Metal, here it is more traditional Heavy Metal. The lead vocals are shared by Karen Gilligan and Keith Fey and are mostly clean on this album. On previous and latter albums Fey used a more aggressive vocal style that is almost entirely absent on the present album. Black Sabbath seems to be an influence as well as Symphonic Metal and electric Folk Rock. Band leader Keith Fey has stated that what Cruachan does today is what the Irish band Horslips did in the 70’s. But while Horslips mixed Irish Folk music with Jethro Tull-like Prog Rock, Cruachan mixes Irish Folk with various Metal styles. In some of their least Metal and most Folk Rock moments Cruachan remind me of the multinational, US-based Folk Rock band Tempest (which I like a lot) and they also sometimes remind slightly of the excellent female-fronted Pagan Progressive Rock band Legend (which I love).

Cruachan’s fusion of Celtic Folk and Metal is very successful and they use a number of genuine traditional Celtic wind, string and percussion instruments in addition to the traditional Rock instruments; tin whistles, flutes, bódhran, uilleann pipes, harp, bouzouki and more. They integrate the different styles much better here than on previous albums and the material is their strongest with every song being great and memorable. As a big fan of electric Folk Rock, Heavy Metal and symphonic progressive Rock, I was blown away by this brilliant band and how they fused these styles together in new and fresh ways. I’m not easily impressed and some of Cruachan’s other efforts have failed to impress me, but Folk-Lore did certainly impress me! Many Metal fans will probably prefer the more aggressive follow-up album Pagan, so don’t give up on this great band if you find Folk-Lore to be not Metal enough.

Cruachan is a much underrated band that deserves much more attention from both Metal fans and fans of Folk Rock and Prog.

Very highly recommended - a masterpiece of Folk Metal!

SouthSideoftheSky “Have I fallen too far to rise, been burning too long in the fire?”

Magica was the first ever explicitly conceptual album by Dio and easily the best Dio album for more than ten years. After three disappointing albums in a row throughout the 90’s and a one-off reunion of the Mob Rules-line up of Black Sabbath that resulted in the weak Dehumanizer album, Dio finally returned to form with Magica which, in my opinion, is one of their best ever albums. The sound of Magica was in many ways a return to the more classic Dio sound of the 80’s. The misguided attempts to sound contemporary are left behind here in favour of some of those ingredients that made albums like Holy Diver and Dream Evil so good. Indeed, veteran bassist Jimmy Bain, who played with Ronnie already in Rainbow in the 70’s, as well as guitarist Craig Goldy returns to Dio here for the first time since Dream Evil in 1987. Not surprisingly perhaps, Magica is more similar in sound to that album than to any of the 90’s albums. Keyboardist Scott Warren is allowed much more space in the sound here and the songs are more melodic. Also Ronnie himself returns to a less aggressive and more harmonious vocal style that made him famous in the first place.

However, Magica is not only about a return to something old, but an introduction of something new. This is certainly Dio’s most progressive album and not only in virtue of being a concept album. The story itself is rather silly though and brings the album down slightly in my eyes, but the music is great with Lord Of The Last Day, Fever Dreams and Eriel all beings excellent songs and the rest is mostly very good too.

Another thing that makes Magica stand out for me is its diversity; it is one of the most varied albums in Ronnie James Dio’s career alternating between traditional Heavy Metal, Prog elements and ballads. As Long As It Is Not About Love is the closest to a genuine ballad as Dio ever came reminding a bit of the classic Catch The Rainbow from Rainbow’s debut from 1975. Eriel is a strong symphonic number with a Heaven And Hell-like bass line. Losing My Insanity is great with its folky/medieval melody and acoustic intro and outro. Sadly there are also short spoken word-passages that I tend to dislike, but they don’t distract too much from the music. The last track on the album is Ronnie himself reading the story of Magica which is a traditional story of good and evil set in some fantasy universe. Not too interesting I must say, but a surprising thing for Dio to do.

According to some sources, Dio had announced that he intended to write Magica parts II and III, but sadly he passed away on the 16th of May 2010 so we will have to make do with this original Magica which is not bad at all. May he rest in piece!

This is one of Dio's best ever albums and their most adventurous. Highly recommended!

SouthSideoftheSky Great cover art, not so great music!

After the disaster that was Lock Up The Wolves, Ronnie James Dio reunited with Black Sabbath to make the disappointing Dehumanizer album. Dehumanizer did not sound like any previous Black Sabbath album, but instead had a much more contemporary and 'thrashy' sound in a misguided attempt to achieve greater commercial success again. While Dio is usually a fantastic singer, I don’t much like his vocals on Dehumanizer. He is trying to sing in a more aggressive style compared to how he sounded on previous Black Sabbath albums, Rainbow's early albums and the 80’s Dio albums. Sadly, Strange Highways, the first Dio album after the Black Sabbath reunion, is Dio trying to make Dehumanizer part II. This is not really my cup of tea.

Vinny Appice is once again aboard, but the rest of the band is new again with Tracy G on guitars and Jeff Pilson on keyboards. Though, like on Lock Up The Wolves, there is not much keyboards on this album. The song writing is only slightly improved compared to the lacklustre Lock Up The Wolves which means that behind the thrashy sounds you find some rather mundane and middle-of-the-road songs. Overall, it becomes a rather tedious listen. After listening to the whole album, I don’t really remember anything special about it which is evidence of its non-existent staying power.

The 90’s were Dio’s weakest period, avoid unless you want a complete Dio collection

SouthSideoftheSky "Sick and tired of being sick and tired"

Following in the footsteps of No More Tears came here Ozzy’s second album from the 90’s and he decided to take his sound further away from the 80’s by making it more contemporary in that dreaded age of Alternative Rock. Though I think that this deliberate attempt to sound contemporary was a clear mistake, the result is actually not that bad despite of this. I would even say that Ozzmosis is almost up to par with The Ultimate Sin and No Rest For The Wicked in terms of quality and I give it the same rating as those two 80’s albums. The material itself and the production is much closer in style to No More Tears than any earlier Ozzy album.

Once again the personnel are radically changed, with only guitarist Zakk Wylde left on board. On bass we here have none other than Geezer Butler who had just left Black Sabbath (again) after an argument with Toni Iommi. Keyboard virtuoso Rick Wakeman of Yes fame is brought in to play on this album, but Wakeman’s presence in the sound is very weak to the degree that you wonder what the point was in bringing him in if he would not be properly utilized. As personal friend of Ozzy’s, this was neither the first time not the last time that he and Wakeman would work together. Wakeman played on Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath back in the 70’s and Ozzy would sing on a track on Wakeman’s 1999 album Return To The Centre Of The Earth.

It is hard to pick out any favourite tracks from this album as it is very even. Albums like The Ultimate Sin and No Rest For The Wicked and even No More Tears were rather uneven and had a few excellent songs and a few no so good songs. Ozzmosis has no excellent songs whatsoever, but also no really bad songs. It is an enjoyable listen for sure, but it is very far away from Ozzy’s best works. Still, it is very impressive and unusual that after 25 years in the music business, Ozzy had yet to release a bad album.

SouthSideoftheSky He’s his own enemy!

Fire & Ice is, in my opinion, one of Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s very best albums featuring some of his best ever compositions both vocal and instrumental. Indeed, there is only one bad song here and that is the awful Teaser which was another misguided attempt at achieving commercial success. This syrupy Pop song brings down the rating slightly and I always skip this song every time I listen to the album and I strongly recommend you to do the same! The rest of the album is, however, less commercial than the previous three of Malmsteen’s albums and more rooted in the Neo-Classical Metal that made him famous in the first place.

The opening instrumental Perpetual is an excellent piece of music and it is clear that Symphony X picked up more than a few tricks from this one. Though very much better than Teaser, Dragonfly too is a bit too commercial for my taste. How Many Miles To Babylon, on the other hand, is an excellent song with a great verse, chorus and solos. Cry No More and No Mercy are very good Neo-Classical Metal songs. The latter has a hilarious (in a good way!) classical interlude. C’est La Vie features Yngwie on sitar and an acoustic middle section. Leviathan is another instrumental and it is again a great one with a somewhat heavier sound than we are used to from Malmsteen.

Ironically, the title track is one of the lesser songs of the album, but still a very good song. At this point I usually feel that I hear more of the same and I almost start wondering whether the rest of the album is going to be a tedious experience. But no, some of the best songs are yet to come! The pace is once again picked up in a big way with the Power Metal-like Forever Is A Long Time, the fastest track on this album and with great guitar and keyboard solos and a symphonic interlude. The keyboards are here played by Mats Olausson and not Jens Johansson (who had left the band at this point), but on this song it sounds very much like if it was Johansson playing.

Next up is a sublime symphonic ballad called I’m My Own Enemy. The vocals of Göran Edman are strong throughout the whole album but especially so on this song. Edman also contributes lyrics to many of the songs, either alone or together with Malmsteen. All I Want Is Everything is a decent song but one of the least interesting on the album. Golden Dawn is a lovely acoustic guitar piece and the album closes with the heavy, symphonic Final Curtain which is another great song. It functions as an album closer as perfectly as Perpetual fits as opener.

Even though all the songs (except Teaser) are good, I still feel that the album would have benefitted from being a little bit shorter than it is. A running time of over an hour is slightly too long to keep the listeners full attention throughout. However, it is not very easy to pick out just which tracks should have been left off. Still, my choices are Dragonfly, Teaser and All I Want Is Everything. Without these songs this album would be even stronger than it is and would probably have gotten another half star from me!

Still, this very underrated album is highly recommended if you like Neo-Classical Metal

SouthSideoftheSky Rediscovery, Pt 2: The New Yngwie J. Malmsteen!

I am often surprised to see that many people rate this album as highly as, if not higher than, the brilliant The Divine Wings Of Tragedy. I find the present album less memorable, less original and less diverse compared to that earlier album. There is no doubt that this is another good Symphony X album, but it does not at all blow me away like The Divine Wings Of Tragedy did. For one, I think that this album is a little bit too long for its own good and while I have listened to The Divine Wings Of Tragedy in its entirety many times, I don’t think that I have listened to the whole of V: The New Mythology Suite more than once or twice in one go. Almost every track is enjoyable for sure, but after the first five or six tracks I tend to get a bit tired of it. Apart from the short Classical interludes, the songs have basically the same sound throughout, and with a running time of over an hour it tends to get a bit samey half way through. The Divine Wings Of Tragedy too runs for over an hour but I never got that feeling while listening to that album at least partly because that album is more varied but also because I simply find the material on that album stronger.

However, the excellent Egypt - which is my favourite track from this album - brings things back on track momentarily. But I think that this great song is actually better when heard alone than in the context of the album as a whole. I actually think that the album would have made a stronger impact had it ended after Egypt, alternatively had they put a radically different type of song there, a ballad for example, to let the listener catch his breath. There is a lot to take in here and it can be too much even for someone who enjoys this kind of Neo-Classical Prog Metal.

Though it is beyond doubt that Symphony X is heavily inspired by Yngwie Malmsteen, while listening to this album I sometimes get the feeling that I’m listening to Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force. Not only is the guitar playing of Michael Romeo similar to that of Malmsteen, but some of the keyboard solos of Michael Pinnella are similar to those of Jens Johansson of Malmsteen’s band. This is not a major problem though, but the song Absence Of Light even has a riff that reminds strongly of one of Malmsteen’s riffs and that becomes a bit too much for me.

There are no real ballads or even semi-ballads on V and neither is there anything to correspond to the 20 minute plus title track on The Divine Wings Of Tragedy. The closing title track runs for 12 minutes, but despite its tasteful use of piano it is not as diverse and memorable as The Divine Wings Of Tragedy title track.

Overall, I find this album a bit overrated especially when compared to The Divine Wings Of Tragedy. Though most songs are good or very good, I often get the feeling that I hear things that I have heard done better elsewhere by Symphony X and others.

SouthSideoftheSky Hold on!

This is the second Deep Purple album since David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes joined the band and Stormbringer follows closely the formula established by Burn. Indeed, there is not much difference between the two albums in style. The respective title tracks open the respective albums, and they fill the same roles and are among the best songs on these two albums. Stormbringer too has a great guitar solo, but the interesting Neo-Classical interplay between Blackmore and Lord that made the title track on Burn so exciting is sadly absent in Stormbringer. But like on the Burn album, the majority of the rest of the album is occupied with funky Blues rockers of varying quality. If you love Burn, Stormbringer is surely a good addition to your collection. But for many of us this is far from essential. When listening to these albums, I’m often tempted to think that they could have made a much better album had they taken the best songs from each and combined it into a single album. But as they now stand, they are not very strong efforts despite some good moments on each.

The real standout for me here is the delightful acoustic ballad Soldier Of Fortune that closes the album (a side note: Ritchie still plays this lovely song live in Blackmore's Night. Candice, his wife, sings it beautifully!). What we find in between the opening title track and the closer is however rather weak material. These songs are much closer in nature to what Coverdale would go on to do with Whitesnake than with what Richie would do with Rainbow. This means rather standard, generic Blues rockers often with sleazy and even sometimes chauvinistic lyrics! The Gypsy is, however, a decent song.

Hardly Deep Purple’s finest moment

SouthSideoftheSky What's going on here?

This album was something of a rebirth for the band after the rather lacklustre Who Do We Think We Are album. The rebirth consisted at least partly in a rather radical line-up change: David Coverdale replaced Ian Gillan on lead vocals and Glenn Hughes replaced Roger Glover on bass and also added additional lead vocals. Burn was also the first Deep Purple album to include synthesisers, which perhaps makes it slightly "progressive" on the opening track and the instrumental closer A 200. The songs in between, however, are far from progressive. Instead, these are rather funky Blues rockers with some interesting bits here and there.

The title track deserves further mention. The guitar and keyboard solos on this song are great, and perhaps the earliest example of Neo-Classical Metal? Very Classically influenced anyway, and very well structured solos, far away from mindless improvisation that sometimes haunted Deep Purple's earlier efforts. The riff of the song is good as well, but unfortunately it is repeated too many times to make this a truly great song for me. They should perhaps have made it shorter, or added an additional riff to the mix? Still, I love to listen to this song and because of the solos in the middle it is one of my favourite Deep Purple songs of all time! Also the aforementioned closing instrumental A 200 is an interesting piece where the great Lord is allowed to shine.

Mistreated is often considered a classic, but I have never liked this strongly bluesy number!

Burn was a bit better recorded and produced compared to most earlier albums. Unfortunately, these improvements in instrumentation and production coincided with them going in more of a straightforward Blues rock directionon on several tracks. They are still fun to listen to, but they are not really that exciting and have very little to do with Metal.

Burn is therefore perhaps not the best place to start for Metal or Prog Rock fans who want to explore Deep Purple. You should probably start with Fireball or Machine Head. And if you still want more after that, then Burn is a good choice!

SouthSideoftheSky Lock up the dwarf!

Ronnie James Dio has been in the music business since the late 1950’s (!) and has thus lived through many changes in musical trends. If you asked him today he would probably claim that he has always stayed the same, but anyone who has heard some of his work with Ronnie Dio & The Prophets, Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio would strongly contest any claim to that effect. The early Dio albums had been all about bringing the kind of music he did with Rainbow and Black Sabbath into the 80’s making it more polished and melodic and with Lock Up The Wolves (and the subsequent couple of albums), he tried to adapt to the musical climate of the early 90’s.

I don’t know the exact details about what happened in between this album and the previous one, but the Dio of Lock Up The Wolves is completely different from the Dio of Dream Evil from three years before. Only Ronnie himself is left in the band here with drum duties being taken over by Simon Wright, bass by Teddy Cook, keyboards by Jens Johansson and guitars by Rowan Robertson. Jens Johansson is an incredible keyboard player most known for dueling with Yngwie Malmsteen on the latter's classic 80’s albums. With Johansson on board you might expect a keyboard heavy album, but ironically there is much less keyboards on this album than on any of the previous Dio albums. What is the point of hiring such an extraordinary keyboard player if he can barely be heard at all on the album? What a waste of talent!

With a wholly new backing band and such a competent one at that, you might expect something of a musical rebirth. But this is very far from the truth! It should be allowed that this is somewhat fresh in the sense that it is very different from previous albums, but the songwriting is middle-of-the-road and utterly unsurprising. The sound is considerably heavier and the music is much less catchy which sounds great on paper but the actual result is nothing to be excited about. Strip away the heavy guitar sound and you expose some rather mundane songs that are every bit as generic and predictable as the least good songs on Sacred Heart and The Last In Line (which is hardly a compliment!), if not worse.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is a strong Blues element on this album that seems to range back to Rainbow’s most bluesy moments (which were always the least exciting element of that great band). I don’t know where this sudden interest in the Blues came from, but on a later tour he even decided to cover Deep Purple’s Mistreated!

One major problem with this album is its sheer length. It runs for over an hour and, given how similar the sound is throughout, it is a rather tedious listen. After listening to the whole album, I don’t really remember anything special about it which is evidence of its non-existent staying power. Don’t get me wrong, this is not downright awful music but there is not one single moment that stands out as great for me. Even the disappointing Sacred Heart had a couple of strong moments, but Lock Up The Wolves is just dreary throughout.

Avoid this one unless you want everything Dio!

SouthSideoftheSky Not quite a “dream album”, but a very good album about dreams!

After the almost complete disaster that was Sacred Heart, Dio regained their strengths for this follow up. While the music is still a bit formulaic in nature, the band seems to have received a new boost of energy and they deliver the most inspired set of songs since Holy Diver. Overall, the sound of Dream Evil is darker and slightly less commercial than previous albums.

Guitarist Vivian Campbell who played on Dio’s first three albums was here replaced with Craig Goldy but otherwise the line-up remained the same with Jimmy Bain, Vinny Appice and Claude Schnell on bass, drums and keyboards respectively. Goldy proved to be a good choice and maybe it was his presence that rejuvenated the band or maybe it was just the fact that they took more time to prepare this album compared to previous albums? Even the cover art is inspired this time depicting a sleeping child (‘dream child’?) surrounded by all kinds of creepy objects and creatures, supposedly the contents of the child’s evil dreams (‘the dark that you find in the back of your mind’). Personally, I like this picture better than the iconic Holy Diver cover and it has a connection to the contents as well.

The album opens with another up tempo Stand Up And Shout-like song in Night People that sets the scene very well for the rest of the album. This is followed by the melodic title track about ‘evil’ dreams that is so well depicted on the cover. I think that this album is at least partly conceptual, though not all songs fit into the concept of dreams in any obvious way. Sunset Superman does however seem to be somewhat thematically connected considering that its opening line is “The night has a thousand eyes, but he moves in only places where the eyes can never be”. While otherwise a good song, the chorus of Sunset Superman is really tedious and repetitive. I have always felt that this song would deserve a better chorus.

All The Fools Sailed Away is the album’s highlight for me and one of my all time Dio favourites. This rather adventurous song runs for over seven minutes which is rather long by Dio standards and contains a quite brilliant middle section with a short keyboard solo and great guitar work. The opening is particularly captivating when Ronnie sings “There's perfect harmony in the rising and the falling of the sea, and as we sail along I never fail to be astounded by the things we'll do for promises… and a song” followed by the main riff of the song. Even this song might be made to fit into the concept of dreams. Consider in particular the following passage “We bring you fantasy, we bring you pain. It's your one great chance for a miracle. Or we will disappear, never to be seen again”. What is it that brings fantasy and pain and then disappears never to be seen again if not our dreams? The chorus itself could be interpreted as “sailing off” into the land of dreams, which is, after all, something that all of us “fools” do every night!

I will not attempt interpretations of all the songs, but even Naked In The Rain has a line about dreams in “Take aim and blow all the dreams away”. Otherwise, it could perhaps be interpreted as an existential song about mankind’s desolate situation in this world. Overlove pretty much explains itself and is the weakest song of the album, in my opinion. Again the chorus is rather tedious and repetitive.

I Could Have Been A Dreamer is about the type of dreams that we have when we are awake and this song works quite well as a kind of melodic ballad. Faces In The Window returns to the main lyrical theme and could again be taken to refer to something from the cover picture, namely the face of the devil in the window above the bed (which is, of course, the figure that is also depicted on the covers of Holy Diver and The Last In Line). This song also contains the phrases “Sleep comes slowly” and “Creations of the mind” that obviously connects it thematically to the first couple of songs.

It doesn’t really matter whether this album was intended as a (semi-)conceptual album or not because it is up to the listener to make his own interpretation and I am quite sure that Ronnie would agree with me on that. To these ears this album contains some of Ronnie James Dio’s most intelligent lyrics (despite some slightly cheesy passages that I have mostly ignored).

As you probably have guessed by now, I like this album a lot more than the previous two and I even think it is up to par with Holy Diver! Admitedly, there are a couple of weak moments too but they are mostly well disguised behind the stronger moments.

SouthSideoftheSky The king of Rock ’N’ Roll? You might be thinking too much of yourself here Mr. Dio!

The previous The Last In Line album contained two of the best Dio songs ever, but the album as a whole was a definite disappointment after the very good debut. Sacred Heart continues the downward spiral for Dio. One problem that became increasingly evident with each subsequent album was the formulaic nature of the music. The opening number, The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll, sounds like a leftover from Ronnie James’ days in Rainbow and reminds of songs by that band that also had ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll’ in the title (If You Don’t Like Rock ‘N’ Roll and Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll, for example). I am usually very suspicious about songs with ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll’ in the title and as if one was not enough, there is yet another such song on this album in Rock ‘N’ Roll Children! For some unknown reason the opening track was recorded live or at least has audience-noise added!

Also other songs on this album contains phrases that have already featured in several earlier Dio songs, I guess the inspiration was running rather low at this point. As I said, the whole album feels formulaic and builds heavily on earlier albums. Hungry For Heaven is Sacred Heart’s counterpart to Mystery from the previous album which was itself similar to Rainbow In The Dark from the debut! These are not genuinely bad songs, but they had clearly done better ones before. The title track is, however, a very good song and easily the highlight of the album. It fills the same role as the title track and Egypt (The Chains Are On) from The Last In Line.

On the tour in support of this album, Dio would bring a large mechanical dragon which Ronnie would kill with a sword each night! This is just one of those ultra-cheesy things that have given Metal music its bad reputation. A live video from the show was later released on which you can witness this abomination! What the hell were they thinking? (Possibly that they had to compensate for the unimaginative music with theatrics?)

Sacred Heart is still a half decent album but the I-have-heard-this-before-feeling is almost omnipresent. Thankfully, things would improve considerably with the next album making Sacred Heart one of the absolute low-points of Dio’s career.

SouthSideoftheSky Evil or divine? A bit of both actually!

After the success of Dio’s first album, it seemed as if Ronnie James could do no wrong – first Rainbow, then Black Sabbath then a classic album as a leader of his own band. Musically, Holy Diver was a kind of crossover between what Ronnie James had been doing with Rainbow and what he did with Black Sabbath but with more of an 80’s sound and more polished production and injected with a couple of more commercial hook-laden songs. The Last In Line is no different in that respect. Indeed, this is basically Holy Diver part II. However, those aspects of the Holy Diver album that worked best, works even better or at least as good here, but those aspects of it that didn’t work so well are even worse here! This makes for a much more uneven and inconsistent album compared to its predecessor with a couple of real gems among several much weaker moments.

The line-up remains the same as on the debut with the exception of the addition of keyboard player Claude Schnell who first joined Dio for the tour in support of Holy Diver. This means that ex-Rainbow bassist Jimmy Bain and ex-Black Sabbath drummer Vinny Appice are still on board.

The album starts with We Rock which is fast song that fills the role that Stand Up And Shout filled on Holy Diver. It lives up to its title well and became a standing show-closer for the band for many years (I think). Next up is the excellent title track that, in my opinion, is one of Dio’s best songs. This song is easily up to par with anything from Holy Diver and is a classic in its own right with captivating vocals and lyrics. Together with this album’s closing number Egypt (The Chains Are On), The Last In Line is also more ambitious than virtually anything that Dio has ever recorded.

Sadly, what follows are three rather generic and predictable songs in Breathless, I Speed At Night and One Night In The City. These songs are significantly less exciting and also too similar to each other to be of any particular interest for anyone other than Dio fanatics. Evil Eyes are slightly better, but the momentum is lost. Mystery is the obvious follow up to Rainbow In The Dark with a similar keyboard-heavy riff and a catchy hook. While this type of song is certain to put some Metal fans off, I actually think Dio does this kind of thing rather well! But it is very predictable after the success of Rainbow In The Dark and much less effective this time. At least the guitar solo is very good.

Eat You Heart Out too features excellent guitar work, but the feeling of ‘I have heard this before’ prevails. Not until the aforementioned closer does the album once again get interesting. Egypt (The Chains Are On) is even stronger than the title track and an absolute gem. This song is somewhat similar to the excellent Sign Of The Southern Cross from Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules album on which Ronnie sang and on one of their recent tours Dio actually mixed these two songs in a very effective medley (as can be heard on the very good live CD/DVD called Evil And Divine – named, by the way, after a line from The Last In Line). But this great song comes in too late to save this album from mediocrity.

To sum up. The Last In Line features two of Dio’s best and most ambitious songs, but the rest is predictable at best and downright boring at worst. Approach therefore with some caution!

SouthSideoftheSky Caught in the middle (between Rainbow and Black Sabbath)

I'm surprised to see that I’m the first person to review this classic, the very first album by Dio and according to many their best. Just like Ozzy Osbourne had done a couple of years earlier, Ronnie James Dio came straight out of Black Sabbath to form his own self-titled band. It is indeed possible, even plausible, that Ronnie James was directly inspired by Ozzy’s solo success and thought that ‘if Ozzy can do it, so can I’. And it turned out he could indeed!

As you all know, Ronnie James Dio was the lead singer in Rainbow before he replaced Ozzy as the lead vocalist in Black Sabbath and the formula for Dio's music is clearly a crossover between Dio-era Rainbow (Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, Rising & Long Live Rock 'N' Roll) and Dio-era Black Sabbath (Heaven And Hell & Mob Rules) but adapted for the 80’s. As a fan of both Rainbow and Black Sabbath, this is a good formula for me even if it is hardly groundbreaking.

Again like Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James too gathered a distinguished cast around him with Jimmy Bain (who previously played with Ronnie in Rainbow) on bass and Vinny Appice (who played with him in Black Sabbath) on drums. The guitarist on Holy Diver was Vivian Campbell, who like Randy Rhoads in Ozzy’s band, was similarly very young and basically unknown before and also very talented. Ironically, Jake E. Lee was part of the initial rehearsals that led up to Holy Diver but he left to join Ozzy’s band and Lee can be heard on the latter’s third album Bark At The Moon that was released the same year as Holy Diver.

Dio did not have a permanent keyboard player at this point but both Jimmy Bain and Ronnie James himself played keyboards on the album. Claude Schnell joined Dio for the tour in support of Holy Diver and then went on to play on subsequent studio albums. Also the production was handled by Ronnie James himself.

Both the title track and the catchy Rainbow In The Dark became hits and Stand Up And Shout and Don’t Talk To Strangers too became strong live favourites for the rest of Dio’s long career. In 2005, Dio would go on a special tour on which they performed the Holy Diver album in its entirety in the original running order which proves just how important this album was for the band and its fans.

However, I don’t think the album is uniformly excellent. I wholly agree that the title track and particularly Don’t Talk To Strangers are eternal classics of traditional Heavy Metal and several of the other songs are great too, but I don’t think the album as a whole reaches the heights of previous classic albums Ronnie James sang on like Rainbow’s Rising and Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell. Gypsy and Straight Through The Heart are the least good songs here, in my opinion.

The slow and heavy closer Shame On The Night seems to be modeled on the songs that closed Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules respectively. But nothing by Dio is as heavy as Black Sabbath and Holy Diver is clearly a more polished affair than those Black Sabbath classics.

Many Metal fans probably dislike the infectious Rainbow In The Dark with its heavily keyboard-driven melody that in many ways resembles what Asia was doing at the time, but I kind of like it, actually! Invisible is another favourite of mine and I particularly like the first part when Ronnie sings the immortal words "If your circle stays unbroken, then you're a lucky man, 'Cause it never, never, never has for me"

Holy Diver is an excellent addition to any Metal collection, but make sure you get those classic Rainbow and Black Sabbath albums first!

SouthSideoftheSky Stand by for Exciter!

Unleashed In The East was Judas Priest's first live album and it featured material from the studio albums Sad Wings Of Destiny, Sin After Sin, Stained Class and Killing Machine. The debut is justifiably disregarded, even though it would have been interesting to hear some of those tracks in a live setting by the evolved version of the band.

Four of the nine tracks are taken from the masterpiece Sad Wings Of Destiny: The Ripper, Victim Of Changes, Genocide and Tyrant. These versions are all great and played a little bit faster than their studio counterparts. Two tracks are taken from Sin After Sin, the brilliant Sinner and the Joan Baez cover Diamonds And Rust. The latter works fine in a live environment, but it would have been more interesting to hear more of the band's own material. Also The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown) is a cover song. This one was originally recorded by Fleetwood Mac and then by Priest on their (at this point) most recent studio album Killing Machine. One other song was lifted off that album in Running Wild. This leaves only one song for Stained Class, but thankfully they picked a great one: the brilliant Exciter.

This live album is sometimes called 'live in the studio' because of it being considerably tinkered with in the studio after its live concert recording. I don't find this annoying other than in a couple of places where it becomes a bit too obvious.

While this live album is energetic and intense and brings together some of the best songs from Judas Priest's best albums, I cannot say that it is truly essential for anyone who already has the studio albums. And if you don't have Sad Wings Of Destiny, Sin After Sin and Stained Class in your collection, get them first!

SouthSideoftheSky Proto-Priest

This is the debut album by Judas Priest and it is very different from all their subsequent releases. The music here is heavily Blues-based and, in sharp contrast to the next album Sad Wings Of Destiny, Rocka Rolla does not push things significantly beyond Led Zeppelin. Rocka Rolla actually sounds as if it is older than the five albums Black Sabbath had released at this stage. This means that Judas Priest would still have a long way to go musically before the masterpiece Sad Wings Of Destiny, released two years later.

Still, if you consider Rocka Rolla for what it is and solely on its own merits, you find a pretty nice Proto-Metal album with several good heavy Blues rockers that stand up pretty well beside similar releases of other bands from around this time. If I’m correctly informed the band opened for Budgie, Thin Lizzy and Trapeze in their early days and if their early stage act were anything like what is on this first studio album, they must have outshined their headliners by far!

I don’t think that this record was terribly important at its time and as such it is not even essential as a historical document. But it remains a good album that I often find more enjoyable and interesting than most of the band's 80's albums! But their best and most interesting period began first with their next album.

SouthSideoftheSky "Faster than a laser bullet, louder than an atom bomb"

In some ways, Painkiller was a return to what the band were doing on Stained Class in 1978 - twelve years and some eight albums earlier! But at the same time, it is not so much a return to something old as something brand new. After six studio albums with Dave Holland, Judas Priest finally re-discovered the drums here with Holland being replaced by Scott Travis. The line from the title track that I have chosen as the headline for this review perfectly describes Travis' drumming on this album. In hearing Painkiller, it suddenly became so obvious that the previous drummer held the band back and this lack in the drum department was a large part of what made most of those 80's albums less than impressive. Drums are a very important part of Metal music and here they finally remembered that again! Compare the drums on Living After Midnight with those on Painkiller and you will see that the difference is about as big as it could possibly be. It is very interesting to think about what earlier albums would have sounded like with Scott Travis behind the kit.

The material on Painkiller is uniformly stronger than on most of the 80’s albums and they seem to have a newfound energy and passion that they haven’t had since the 70’s. Indeed, there is not one weak moment on this album with the title track, Between The Hammer & The Anvil, A Touch Of Evil and Battle Hymn/One Shot At Glory being my personal favourites. A Touch Of Evil features keyboards by Don Airey who previously added keyboards to albums by Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Ozzy Osbourne and many others. Whatever keyboards can be found of the rest of the album are by Glenn Tipton.

The only problem I have with this album is that the songs are rather similar to each other. This is especially so during the first half, but it remains highly enjoyable throughout. The reissued version features the bonus track Living Bad Dreams which is a nice ballad that would have added some more diversity to the album.

Rob Halford left the band shortly after this album (but he returned many years later).

One of Judas Priest's better albums!

SouthSideoftheSky Time after time

Ozzy entered the 90’s with this release which is widely recognized as a return to form and has become one of his most loved albums. Mama, I’m Coming Home, Road To Nowhere, Time After Time, Mr. Tinkertrain and the title track were all released as singles and the first three of these were very successful. While Time After Time is a rather tedious song, the rest of these songs are indeed excellent! Mama, I’m Coming Home and Road To Nowhere in particular are quite uncharacteristic Ozzy songs; very melodic and with a slight American sound. The former beings with a Steel Guitar! These two songs have taken their rightful place alongside such classics as Mr. Crowley, Crazy Train and Bark At The Moon as eternal live favourites played at every concert since (I think). Also, I Don’t Want To Change The World and No More Tears have become live favourites and eternal classics.

It is clearly noticeable while listening to this release that we have left the 80’s and No More Tears has a very different sound compared to any of the 80’s albums. But Ozzy had, of course, adapted to changing musical trends before as he had been in the music business since the late 60’s. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t totally abandon his classic sound, but he modified it a bit to make it fit the 90’s and he did it in a rather tasteful and balanced way. However, several of the songs on this album are just good Rock and not Heavy Metal.

And now the downside; there are also some weaker songs here and overall I find this less exciting than the early 80’s classics (his three first).

Still, this is definitely worth having

SouthSideoftheSky Miracle man!

Ten years after being kicked out of Black Sabbath and four good solo albums under his belt (three of which are all time classics and all of which contained classic songs), it seemed that Ozzy Osbourne could do nothing wrong. All kinds of problems haunted him; drugs, alcohol, the sudden and tragic death of his guitarist Randy Rhoads (RIP), several lawsuits, etc. etc. but all these problems only seem to have spurred him on! And indeed, this fifth solo album is once again a good one, even if I think that it was his least good one yet at that point. Jake E. Lee who replaced Randy Rhoads after the Diary Of A Madman album and played on Bark At The Moon and the previous The Ultimate Sin is here replaced with Zakk Wylde. Wylde would then stay in Ozzy’s band for many years to come, but musically No Rest For The Wicked is much more in line with Bark At The Moon and The Ultimate Sin than with Ozzy’s 90’s and 2000’s albums.

Like all previous Ozzy solo albums, this one too contains some ‘hits’ in Miracle Man, Crazy Babies and Breakin’ All The Rules. It is, however, songs like Fire In The Sky and Hero that stand out for me. Indeed, these two songs sound a bit like outtakes from the excellent Bark At The Moon album – my favourite Ozzy solo album. Several of the other songs here are, however, a bit too straightforward and catchy for my taste.

Still, this is a good album and a good addition to the previous four albums. It is, however, not the best place to start!

SouthSideoftheSky “I can understand that what you see you think is real, but underneath the surface is a wound that cannot heal”

Following the excellent Bark At The Moon album, The Ultimate Sin was the second album featuring guitarist Jake E. Lee and the fourth album overall from Ozzy Osbourne (not counting his albums with Black Sabbath, of course). Comparing the present album with his earlier efforts, this one is clearly less great and also a bit more polished than previous albums. But it is still a good album in its own right. Like Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman, The Ultimate Sin too has a couple of weaker tracks, but this is still a mostly very enjoyable album. The second half of the album is particularly enjoyable with great songs like Killer Of Giants, Fools Like You and Shot In The Dark. The first of these three is this albums’ counterpart to Revelation (Mother Earth) from the debut or the excellent title track from Diary Of A Madman. This song is my favourite from this album and it features wonderful, Neo-Classical acoustic guitar playing from Jake E. Lee. Shot In The Dark is one of Ozzy’s biggest hits and one of his most well-known songs. Some people probably find it too Pop, but I think it is a classic! This song got Ozzy into at least one lawsuit over who actually wrote the song, most people say it was bass player Phil Soussan who replaced Bob Daisley for this album (with which Ozzy also had an argument). It cannot have been easy to work with Ozzy!

The title track and Secret Loser are also both very good songs, the latter featuring very personal lyrics. The weaker tracks of the album come in the middle with Never Know Why being particularly weak with cheesy lyrics and an overly catchy chorus. Lightning Strikes too has an awful chorus, though the rest of the song is decent I suppose. Thank God For The Bomb shares its lyrical theme with Killer Of Giants which are both about nuclear weapons in particular and war in general. It would have been interesting had they opted for making the whole album conceptual!

The present album is a good addition to any Ozzy Osbourne collection, but start with the three first albums.

SouthSideoftheSky Hard as iron

After the mostly misguided Turbo, Judas Priest returned to their earlier style with Ram It Down. Indeed, it is hard to believe that this was the follow up to Turbo when it sounds very much like a follow up to Defenders Of The Faith. The title track is up to par with anything from Defenders Of The Faith or Screaming For Vengeance, but the rest is rather uneven ranging from very good to downright awful. The worst mistake is the inclusion of a cover of the Rock 'N' Roll classic Johnny B. Goode! It is a total embarrassment! I'm A Rocker is a similarly misguided song which also is in the traditional Rock 'N' Roll style.

Heavy Metal, Love Zone and Come And Get It are decent songs I suppose, but they add nothing of value to Judas Priest's by this point already vast output of similar songs. These songs sound like bleak copies of those from Defenders Of The Faith. Love You To Death would fit better on an Alice Cooper album!

The best songs come in the middle this time with Hard As Iron and Blood Red Skies being the highlights of the album together with the title track. Hard As Iron has a propulsive rhythm and some very good guitar solos while Blood Red Skies is something of a semi-ballad very much in the style of Out In The Cold from the previous album.

The album closes with Monsters Of Rock, a slow and heavy song. Not bad!

Even though a definitive improvement over Turbo and despite a couple of strong tracks, this album is (like most of Judas Priest's 80's albums) primarily for collectors and fans.

SouthSideoftheSky An endangered species?

The two brothers, keyboardist Jens and drummer Anders Johansson, has so far made three albums together (plus one together with guitarist Allan Holdsworth). The Last Viking was the last one they did and this one is quite different from the others. The Last Viking is clearly much less jazzy and also, at least on the surface, less progressive than the two other Johansson Brothers albums and even more so compared to the straightforward Jazz-Rock of Heavy Machinery (the one they did with Holdsworth). But The Last Viking is also more consistent and, on the whole, much better in my opinion.

For those of you who don't know the history of these guys, they both used to play in Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force in the 80's. For this album they enlisted Mike Romeo from Symphony X on guitars and Göran Edholm on vocals. The former is strongly influenced by Malmsteen's playing and the latter also used to sing for Malmsteen. But even if The Last Viking has some minor similarities with Yngwie Malmsteen's music, and also to that of Symphony X, these influences are not too apparent. The Last Viking has a much warmer and melodic sound that would be foreign to these metal bands, and the Johansson brothers have a much wider set of influences that stretches far beyond the narrow boundaries of metal music. This can be seen on their (especially Jens') extremely diverse output.

The Johansson brothers are obviously very skilled on their respective instruments and Romeo is a great guitar player, but this is not an album based on shredding and showing off chops. On the contrary, these songs are strongly based on melody and not on instrumental workout. They do burst out in many short, often extremely fast paced and impressive keyboard and guitar solos, but these are always appropriate within the context of the songs and never excessive. It is also clear that the three instrumentalists work together, and it is never a matter of just providing a backdrop for only one of them to show off. The instrumentalists share about equal space in the sound, which I like a lot.

We find here a very nice balance between up tempo songs, ballads and instrumentals. The material is very melodic. The ballads and the two instrumentals are great counterpoints to the more fast paced metal songs. On the surface this is rather conventional 80's metal, but at the same time it is not conventional at all. Below the surface we find a rich sonic palette and a strong sense of melody. The Jazz and Blues influences of earlier Johansson Brothers albums are almost gone, as are the more experimental edge, but there are still strong Classical influences here. Many would probably find this music a bit cheesy, but I find it cute and charming. I must say that I like this album more than most albums by Symphony X or Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force (though The Last Viking does not come close to the very best albums by these bands).

The vocals are very good and In The Mirror especially has excellent harmony vocals. The lyrics are perhaps not too interesting and are often about love and man's relation with nature (and Vikings?!). Again, some would find this cheesy, but I find it rather charming. You cannot take it too seriously, as I'm sure they don't do themselves! The keyboards sound like organs, pianos and harpsichords (even if I'm pretty sure that everything is produced with electronic keyboards). Everything has a sound that I do not recognize from somewhere else.

I enjoy this album, you might too

SouthSideoftheSky Fate speaks loud!

The presence here of one of my heroes in Steve Howe from Yes on acoustic guitar was the primary reason for me checking this out. But I also knew Terry Bozzio's great drumming from UK, as well as the people from Dream Theater. Howe's impact on the music here turned out to be quite minimal, but I don't mind that since what I found was a great Prog Metal album. Indeed, together with Dream Theater's Images And Words this is one of the best such albums that I've heard!

Explores Club is obviously a project strongly inspired by the classic Prog bands of the 70's (some of which some participants here belong(ed); Yes, UK). But while Explorers Club clearly belongs to a genre and tradition, I do not find them derivative. At least not in the blatant sense of so many Neo-Prog and Prog Metal bands trying to sound exactly like their older heroes. The presence of legends like Howe and Bozzio lends this project some legacy often lacking in most newer Prog bands. Explorers Club manages to create a sound of their own; informed by the classics, but not copying them.

This music is less Metal than that of Dream Theater. The sound of Age Of Impact has nothing to do with the 80's and 90's Thrash Metal that said band would lean so heavily towards on most of their post-Images And Words albums. Surprisingly, there is also sometimes an almost New-Age or World Music influence on this album! Some parts of the second "impact" sounding a bit like Mike Oldfield with (moderately used) programmed drums and some exotic percussion. This feels fresh and sounds interesting to my ears.

The five "impacts" are basically one long, 50 minute + song! Bass, guitar, drums and keyboards are all excellently played. And the vocals and lyrics are very good too. The guitar surprisingly sometimes sounds a bit like Jazz Fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth on some parts. The balance between electric and acoustic guitars is very good and there are also some other instruments, like a Jethro Tull-like flute solo at one point!

Age Of Impact actually made an 'impact' on me and I consider it one of the best newer Prog albums (i.e. albums not from the late 60's to early 80's)

Highly recommended!