Kev Rowland Apparently these guys were formed as long ago as 1977, and when they were called Angelina they had a number one hit single in 1980 in their home country of Austria at which point they changed their name to Gallow’s Pole. Since then there have been the normal line-up changes, but band leader Alois Martin Binder has been there since the very beginning. This is their seventh album, so one would expect them to really know what they are doing by now, and there is no doubt that they can play and that the production is very good indeed, it’s just a shame that the songs just don’t work at all. What we have is a band that wants to be really heavy, but also wants to very melodic, with a singer whose voice is probably best described as ‘different’. The result is something that is actually the worse of all worlds, as they are too heavy for the style of music they are trying to develop, and too slow to be a traditional metal outfit while too melodic to be anything but soft rock.

The first time I played this I kept waiting for something to change, as there is no way that a band that has been working for well over thirty years should produce something as bad as this. The second time I played it I kept berating myself for forcing myself to play something that wasn’t very good at all. I would be lying if I said that I made it all the way through a third. The best part of this album is the artwork – don’t play it, just look at it.