Strangeways, this Scottish band with an American singer (Terry Brock) is responsible for one of the best AOR-albums ever made, the brilliant Walk In The Fire. I know some people also want to put in Native Sons there, but in my book, it couldn’t hold a candle to Walk In The Fire. The band split up in the wake of Grunge, but reunited a few years back.
Their come back album, the dreadful Perfect World from 2010 really made the expectations for this follow up real low. And unfortunately, this album is just tiny bit better, or maybe not as bad. It is really beyond me how a band that has written a killer like Walk In The Fire can fail so completely with two albums in a row. On the good side, ”The Sentinel” and ”Run” are both very good, not too unlike the sound on WITF and ”End Of The Day” is also very good, a cute little pop song. But that’s about it. The rest of the songs goes from mediocre to real bad. In ”Frozen” they have the album’s only real rocker. Which would have been cool if it wasn’t for the fact that the song just isn’t very good.
Sound wise, they are trying really hard to make it sound like WITF. Maybe too hard, but it doesn’t matter when the songs just aren’t up for the task. Maybe they should concentrate more on writing really good songs than to try to make another WITF. I’m sorry, but with this album, I give up.
Jon Wilmenius (3/10)
Tracklist:
1.The Sentinel
2.Run
3.Playin’ It Over
4.As We Fall
5.Call
6.End Of The Day
7.Alive Again
8.Silver Moon
9.Frozen
10.Long Road
CD & Festival reviews 