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Hailing from
Belfast, Northern Ireland, this five piece hard rock band have their roots
firmly in the classic rock scene, with the bands influences being the
likes of Whitesnake, Deep Purple, Dio and Journey as well as the whole
NWOBHM era. The band itself consists of John Harv Harbinson on
vocals, Keith Harris on guitar, Peter Rondo Macken on bass, Stevie Prosser
on keyboards, and completing the line-up Julian Watson on drums.
You might think
that with all those influences are they just another band trying to relive
those glory days we all loved, well not quite, what they have succeeded to
do with this new album is take all those early inspirations and bring it
bang up to take.
The album opens up
with ‘Spellbound’, a track that is well within the parameters of the
NWOBHM sound, with its slow built up then the explosive start with
Harbinson’s classic rock style vocals.
The band carries
on the classic rock sound with the No Sweat sounding ‘Hold Onto Her Love’
(yes I know Harv sang with No Sweat), but this time there’s a little more
bite to the guitar sound.
The band bring
things down a touch with the ‘Stranger Things Have Happened’, another
guitar rich track, but it's Harbinson’s vocals that really shine out on
this one, where they have just a touch of the Toby Jepson’s about them.
Things start
rocking with the excellent ‘Nervous Breakdown’, a real stormer of a track
that shows the band can rock with the best of them. The classic rock
feel continues with ‘ Crying In The Rain’, a track that makes you feel
very nostalgic for by-gone times.
The same can be
said about the NWOBHM feel with the guitar laden ‘Call Of The Wild’,
another track that has its heart and soul deep in the 80's and it even
comes complete with snarling intro.
The band once
again shows their rockier side with another quality power ballad entitled
'Beating of a Heart' and the up-tempo Purple-esq 'New World', before
things get really melodic with 'Tuggin At My Heartstrings'.
The band step out
of the shadows of their influences with probably my favourite track off
the album 'Sky High', another track where Harbinson really shines as a
melodic rock vocalist.
The album closes
with 'Rock On Through The Night', another piece of 80's inspired Melodic
Hard Rock which rounds off an album that will have those in the Melodic
rock pundits hailing the band as the new messiah’s of the genre, but
personally although this is a good melodic rock album, it's still lacking
that certain spark to bring something new to the genre. |
