It's the first of four Trans-Atlantic Metal Mondays. That means after reading this blog you should slip over to Rock of ages to read about what Bill wrote about this album. If you went to his blog first then you just have to read my views.
I remember brief mentions in some magazines of this band when their "Young Gods" album came out in 1991. I really don't remember if I knew that they were British or not back then. This album is fairly catchy, melodic hard rock which had the misfortune of coming out here in 1992. Grunge was on fire by then so this kind of music was destined to struggle by this time or at least here in the states it would have. However that's a shame because this is a good album. I had no idea what to expect before hearing this other than that they were hard rock. They were more blues oriented than I expected. It's a subtle blues rock sound, but it's there for many of the tracks. At times it makes me think of Aerosmith's two albums from the late 1980's and maybe a little of the London Quireboys as well. However the flow here is different, a little even and smooth perhaps. There's a little more of a faint 70's classic rock sound sprinkled here and there as well. They seem very confident and don't feel the need to always have the very punctuated choruses that many hard rock bands overused between say 89-92. The vocals are smooth and even, but sharp enough to be catchy. The music is solid and even the songs with horns work well. Now I would have liked to seen a few more rockers as the slow songs seem to dominate the album, but I can live with that.
This album did very well in the UK, but of course I didn't know that until very recently. One source said the band's record label chose not to push the album here in the states. I don't know if that's true or not, but it didn't make a dent here as far as I know. Even if it had gotten label support I doubt whether it would have made it here in 1992 because of the change in music trends. Now if it had come out in 1990 then it could have gone over big here because melodic hard rock was riding high then. I do very much think this is good hard rock for the time unlike some pulp like Warrant and Trixter that were getting noticed for releasing very bland bugglegum hard rock.
***Next week will be the second of the four Trans-Atlantic Metal Mondays. Up next week is the debut from an LA band who would get some notice, but I think their debut was fairly unique and maybe got overlooked a little when it was released.
Okay Mark, I'd not thought of Aerosmith similarites before and the Quireboys were about at the same time and seemed very different to me!
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree on the Grunge thing ensuring this was ignored in the US in 1992/93 but I still can't understand why some of our best bands of the late 80s were ignored over there when some poor stuff was getting released on big labels.
I got this album was actually pleasantly surprised when I picked it up in a bargain bin.. It's pretty good but definitely falling in rock category for me.
ReplyDeleterock of ages-I have three theories on your last question.
ReplyDelete1-The LA scene produced a lot of bands that sold albums so labels figured it was the hip scene and kept tapping that scene as their supplier of bands.
2-The British bands you mention lean a little more to a rock sound even classic rock at times. Some record execs may have thought those bands would appeal to a slightly older audience than the fans that listened to the glam stuff that was big at the time.
3-Some record labels had no idea what they were doing and are as much to blame for the fall of hard rock as anybody.