Kingcrimsonprog I absolutely loved Black Country Communion and was gutted when they split up. Their music was so fresh, vibrant and energetic despite its obvious homage to the past and they really were just about the best Hard Rock band doing the whole ’70s-worship sound of recent years. All three of their albums from before their split have at least five songs that are among my favorite ever songs and which are better than just about any of the classic ’70s band’s modern output for my personal taste.

How happy was I then, when I heard they were getting back together. I remember reading on Blabbermouth all around the time of their split (and yet again when California Breed, a band with some of the same members, formed) about how lead guitarist and occasional singer Joe Bonamasa was too famous and busy in his own right to give Black Country Communion the time, as his schedule simply wouldn’t allow it. I remember hoping for the day he’d have the time again. Well, thank goodness its all sorted and we have more from this band. You can see the phoenix on the cover illustrating the band’s reformation.

There’s a certain magic when Glen Hughes, Jason Bonham, Derik Sherinian and Joe Bonamasa get together, (only heightened by ‘fifth member of the band,’ producer Keven Shirley). The bass and drums match styles perfectly, the keys accentuate the vocals so well, the guitar and key solos fit well together, both vocalist’s styles gel, the guitar works so well with the rhythm section. Its all so perfectly balanced, and thanks to the roomy production it all sounds so big and warm.

Basically; this reunion record has a lot of expectations to live up to. On first listen its nice to hear they are keeping up the same style of music and doing the same sort of thing. Its not suddenly taken a rap or electronic turn, they haven’t chucked it all away and went pop or something. Its exactly what you’d hope for, stylstically.

There’s plenty of depth, characther and a fair bit of variety. A lot of the tracks stretch out a bit, many lasting seven or eight minutes. There’s a nice balance of slow and fast, of hard and soft, of thoughtful and of instantaneous. There’s moments that lean a bit more into each of the member’s individual territories and there’s moments when its a mixture of all.

After knocking you over the head (no pun intended) with two mid paced Hard Rockers, for example, they drop a very interesting folky number. If you liked ‘The Battle Hadrian’s Wall’ then you are sure to dig ‘The Last Song for My Resting Place.’ If you like things a bit slower, sexier and well, blusier then at the album’s midway point they drop ‘The Cove’ which has some seriosuly good guitar and very atmospheric keys. Eight-minute album closer ‘When The Morning Comes’ starts out on a slow and sombre note before kicking off.

If you like the band at their faster and heavier however (think ‘The Outsider’ or ‘Confessor’) then they’ve got that here too, on ‘Sway.’ ‘The Crow’ does it too, sounding initially like a rip-off of RATM’s ‘Bulls On Parade’ before hitting the gas and running away with the speed.

I think my favourite track has to be either ‘Over My Head’ with its fun stop-start verses and its catchy ‘yeah-e-eah’ hook, or else ‘Awake’ which doesn’t really sound like anything they’ve done before, it starts off jaunty and almost indie rock but has a kind of ‘Achilles’ Last Stand‘ vibe in the verses and then goes into a full-on Yes meets Dream Theater solo-trade-off.

Overall; BCCIV had a lot of high expectations to meet, and luckily it holds up really well. They do what they do best, they try some new things, they balance all the different shades of their sound well and present an entertaining record that keeps you guessing but that fits together into a stylish hour long journey. The quality of the material is damn strong, the musicianship is exemplary, the production job is of course perfect and even though I’m biased and just glad to have the band back, I’d say this is absolutely good enough to sit alongside their previous work. I’d recommend checking it out if you’ve ever been a fan!

Kingcrimsonprog Black Country Communion are a British/American supergroup named after the Black Country area of England from which their singer and drummer hail, who play a classic rock sound that is rooted firmly in the 1970s but with a few modern twists, and who are rather prolific, having released three studio albums and a live album/DVD/Blu-Ray in just three years.

2012’s Afterglow is the band’s third full-length studio album. As with all the band’s previous work, the album was produced by Kevin Shirley and the line-up consists of Glen Hughes (Deep Purple, Trapeze, Black Sabbath) on bass and vocals, modern Blues icon Joe Bonamassa on guitar and occasional vocals, Derek Sherinian (Dream Theatre, Planet X, Alice Cooper, Yngwie Malmsteen) on keyboards and Jason Bonham (Led Zeppelin reunions, Jimmy Page, The Firm, Paul Rogers, UFO) on the drums.

This third album is still very much in the 1970s bluesy rock mould of the band’s previous work, but there are a few twists and turns musically, into funk, soul and rnb territory adding variety and colour to the existing formula. There is a bit of a lush orchestral touch on a few songs as usual and in general, the album does the best job it can of balancing keeping what makes the band so good in the first place with not becoming stale.

Conscious of not repeating the structural formula of their previous work too closely either, the album doesn’t open with a speedy hard rock number (‘Black Country’ & ‘The Outsider’) although they still managed to write such a track and release it as the albums first single (‘Confessor’) but let it hang back a little later in the running order.

The album once more has a different feel than the previous two in that Joe Bonamassa contributed less music and Jason Bonham contributed more than previously, and then on top of that, the album originally started out as a Glen Hughes solo album before being reworked into a band effort.

The album has generated some non-musical press because the band members disagree publicly about touring in support of the album, as the band normally have to fit touring around Joe Bonamassa’s hectic schedule but they released this particular album at an inconvenient time for Joe. Regardless, while context is interesting, an album realistically ought to be judged on musical merit alone and so its probably best not to let that touring-argument influence your opinion.

At the end of the day; everybody will have their own opinion of this album, whether that be that it is the best thing they ever done, a giant disappointment or just average. In my personal opinion the album is an absolute masterstroke and I love it more with each listen.

From the bouncy moments like ‘Cry Freedom,’ to the funky ‘Big Train,’ and the hard closer ‘Crawl’ every track on the album is enjoyable, the music and vocals are utterly sublime and the production is brilliant sounding. Just like, and perhaps even a little more so than the two albums which preceded it, it just sounds like a classic album. Just listening to the brief guitar solo on the title track, or the main riff on ‘The Giver’ gives off the feel of something that I’ve known and loved for years even on the first listen.

Overall; I highly recommend this album if you like the band. If possible try to disregard the press surrounding the touring and just enjoy the well-crafted music. Furthermore; if you can get it for a good price, try and get the special edition version which has a DVD with some music videos and more importantly an enjoyable 45-minute making-of documentary with a lot of studio footage, where you can hear them working out tracks like ‘Dandelion’ on acoustic guitars before hand and having a bit of fun between takes.

Stephen I'm amazed with a bunch of extremely high ratings for this one because my ears didn't tell me the same. I came as a casual classic rock fan but aside from the fact that this is indeed a Zeppelin/Purple injected rock with a band of seasoned veterans, Hughes and Bonham to name a few, the songs just don't work fine for me.

I hardly find any memorable tracks at all, in fact, good track is a scarcity here. I like 'I Can See Your Spirit', the riffs are nice, the chorus is good, but even this song that I considered the best here is probably an average one. 'The Outsider' has a good guitar/keyboard duel just like in the old Purple days, 'The Battle For Hadrian's Wall' reminds me to Zeppelin a lot, while 'Save Me' is slow and doomy, with a little Middle-eastern flair, but sadly those three still can't please my appetite.

Sadly, 'Man In The Middle', 'Smokestack Woman', 'Crossfire', and 'Cold' are terribly disposable fillers for me. 'Faithless' might be a good indication to be a radio track but still not sure whether it can prevail in the first week. This is one of the few albums that was praised highly all over the world but didn't work out for me.

poslednijat_colobar An ultimate hard/blues rock classic

The second Black Country Communion album, called just 2 is precise hard/blues rock masterpiece with immediate effect among the listeners. All the things I've been talking about the debut album are valid here in 2 again, but there are another unique steps forward to this album's greatness.

The first aspect is the cohesion of the band members. All these great musicians are working in perfect harmony on 2 and it's obviously seen. 2 is magical album with lots of energy and intensity. The melancholy is main feeling in some ballads and plays an opposite role to solid hard rock performances.

The construction of 2, musicianship, songwriting, producton and routine are all of highest standard and revealed the exactitude of this cult album.

poslednijat_colobar Staggering classic/hard/blues rock experience into the 10s.

When I heard about the creation of this band, I have been very enthusiastic about that. All these musicians (Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian) are established leading players in contemporary rock music and now we have the chance to hear what they to say as a supergroup.

...and the result is astonishing blues/hard rock album, constructed in all the rules of the 70s hard rock music without any noticeable defects and flaws recommended for all rock fans...

As usual, I won't review this debut album called Black Country song by song. It's a homogeneous piece of art and carries an united spirit of expressivness. The songwriting is a masterclass with genuine and unostentatious ideas, built in highly mature conception. The musicianship is just a perfect enjoyment. "The voice of rock" as we all know Glenn Hughes is again and again in his well-known faultless form of playing bass and singing. His genius and capability of remodeling his voice helps him to sing in 4-5 different manners of timbre. To Joe Bonamassa's account could be recorded his sateen voice (in four songs) and technical guitar solos , alternated with low-tunes keyboard solos of Derek Sherinian. Jason Bonham plays in highly intensive and dynamic way, which tempted lots.

Black Country is another evidence, that most of the magnificent musicians need to play with other magnificent musicians in a band in order to fulfill thier own potential. As we saw most of all solo albums with session musicians are just a padding in comparison with albums like Black Country.

The last thing I shall notice is the similarity of the band with other hard rock bands. It's like facilitation of the listeners. The most similar band to Black Country Communion indisputably for me is Led Zeppelin. Afterthat it comes Deep Purple. So attention for the fanbase of both fore-mentioned bands!

Kingcrimsonprog Black Country Communion released their first live outing, Live Over Europe in late 2011 just a few short months after their second studio album ‘2’ and only about a year after their self-titled debut.

The band, which is something of a super group featuring the talented Joe Bonamassa, Glen Hughes, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinham. Between them they’ve worked in all sorts of interesting and important bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (sort of), Jimmy Page’s solo works, Dream Theater and lots of other solo and guest work.

There are some good things going for Live Over Europe. The set-list for example is pretty fabulous, featuring fifteen live original songs by the band (with another studio version in the credits, inexplicably listed on the back) as well as a modified Bonamassa solo track and one Deep Purple cover (‘Burn.’) This is a pretty impressive turn out considering the band only have twenty-three songs at the time it was recorded.

In terms of non-concert extras, the booklet has linear notes and there is a documentary bonus feature along with some photo galleries.

The biggest problem with this release however is the format; it is taken from different shows on different European dates, instead of just picking one to film and release in its entirety. Some of the shows are indoor, some are festivals and as such the sound quality and mixing from each is a little different, which can prevent it from flowing as well as a single show would.

The editing job isn’t exactly the best either, with the first song ‘Black Country’ especially suffering. The track is split up between the different concerts and stitched together, with little sections of documentary dialogue in there too. Luckily though, this is the only song to be spoiled in such a way and the rest of the release displays each song intact and complete from beginning to end at the one show, although sometimes the transition between shows will feature a few seconds of documentary footage.

If you can get by the format and forgive the editing (and the aspect ratio), this is still a good enough release that is fairly enjoyable. I have watched it a fair few times since it came out and do not regret buying it despite its flaws.

While quality isn’t consistent, some of the shows have very good sound and visuals. In each show, the band are always great performers and the songs themselves are very good so it really does still offer a lot of quality for fans, so long as they aren’t put off by the aforementioned format and editing.

Overall; Live Over Europe isn’t everything you could hope for in a Black Country Communion live release, so take that into consideration before picking up a copy, but at the same time it is a Black Country Communion live release, which should be enough for a lot of people. The wonderful playing and superb vocals from Joe and Glen really do make up for a heck of a lot and tracks like ‘The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall’ and ‘The Ballad Of John Henry’ are absolutely phenomenal live.