Stephen
This album was referred to me by a friend of mine after we talk a bit about Retrospect's latest release, Crystal Project. Apparently, some songs in 'Peace' were taken from the old Crystal Project, though I can't remember which. This is pure AOR, with mostly midtempo and complemented with couple of ballads, majority of the songs are good to great, but there are at least 3 poor fillers as usual.
The first track, 'Rainmaker', is a straight filler. Now I'm not sure why don't they put up tracks like 'Everytime' or 'Lost Angels' since both are excellent tunes and can be a massive opener instead of it. 'I Am' is a good track, as good as the ballad, 'Miracles', but the other four tracks that I'm going to mention are just better.
'Without You' and '2 AM (Hang Out Here)' are stunning. Both are awesome tracks with awesome chorus, definitely the type of songs that you want in AOR. Skip 'What I'd Rather Be' and don't touch 'Inside Out' as it's the worst of the bunch. On the tenth track, you'll be treated with a superior ballad, 'I Believe', and the closing track, 'Never Alone', is also another strong tune that I love.
By a normal calculation, this album is probably worth around 75%, or even 80%, but the bad production torn it apart. I know maybe most of the songs here were taken from the 80s or suffered from bad technology, but I've heard much better result from other bands, so it's not a big excuse. Worth to buy for those big tracks and especially if you can find it cheap, but it all comes down to a final scoring of 70% which means it's still a good album, but not really essential to have.