Phenomena – Awakening

Escape Music
2012


Phenomena's story begins back in the early part of the eighties. This hard rock/melodic metal band was created by record producer Tom Galley with the term super group in mind. Throughout the band's career numerous well known musicians have been involved and the results have been pretty impressive. The best way to describe the band's approach would be to point toward Liberty N' Justice. In other words bring in any and every musician you could think of from hard rock/AOR and melodic metal bands, throw them in the studio and see what happens! The singers this time around are Lee Small (Shy), Toby Hitchcock (Pride Of Lions), Rob Moratti (ex-Saga), James Christian (House Of Lords), Ralf Scheepers (ex-Gamma Ray, Primal Fear), Mike DiMeo (ex-Riot, ex-Masterplan), Terry Brock (Strangeways, Giant) and Niklas Swedentorp (Coldspell) among others. So, as you can see there is some talent to be found there and quite honestly these various vocalists work well with the material they are given. Backed by main muscians Martin Kronlund (guitars/bass), Tom Harlan (guitars & keyboards), Imre Daun (drums), Henrik Thomsen (bass) and Per Aronson-Andersson - (Hammond, keyboards) the album ends up as a nice collection of songs that merge bits of hard rock, AOR, melodic metal and progressive rock together. It is not always a perfect fit and it might not be the best work Phenomena has ever put out but, songs like "Dancing Days" are too good to pass up.