Uli Jon Roth-Under a dark sky

SPV
2008

As I scanned the back of the CD case before listening to this disc my eyes took in the listing of ten tracks and then one of those was broken down into three chapters and the final track was broken down in no less than a dozen chapters or parts. Suddenly I felt like I did back in college when my professor plopped down copies of Moby Dick on every one’s desk and informed us that we had four days to read it and write a ten page paper. Yes, I was expecting to be a bit overwhelmed by this album just due to the number of tracks and the number of musicians contributing as well. I am most familiar with Roth for his time with the Scorpions back in the 1970’s, but now he plays a rather neo-classical style. There are a number of people contributing to this album including vocals from Mark Boals, currently of Royal Hunt, and Liz Vandall, ex Sahara. Roth plays all guitars, bass and keyboards on his creation. I am sure that the attention here was to build moods and no doubt there are some definite ideas behind this release. Listening to this album would be kind of like doing a long dot to dot puzzle but finding out in the end that it doesn’t really form a picture. The vocals and orchestral and choir parts do a great deal of floating and wandering around yet they never quite contribute enough to really construct anything very definite to latch on to. Much of this album just swirls about with sounds coming and going although it’s very light and spacey at times with far more fog than substance. At times I wasn’t sure if I was listening to many songs or just one long, giant track that was going to meander on forever. Now Uli Jon Roth does tip in with some guitar passages of course and some are quite stunning because he far more about tones and feeling than about flash and dash. Yet the length and format of this album sets it up to be a huge creation and what’s really inside is a lot fluff and go around with only a few assorted moments that really accomplish much. I can appreciate having grand ideas, but you should only do so if you plan or seeing through the entire project and to me this album just a bit too thin and long-winded for my liking.