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Artist: H.A.R.D. |
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As
a kid at school, music was one of only 3 lessons I liked because we got
to play along on instruments whilst the teacher played piano, then for
the last 15 minutes we’d get to play records and if I was lucky, one
of my favourites would be played and I’d daydream that one day I’d
want to ‘do that when I grow up’. No doubt the members of
H.A.R.D. experienced something on those lines but ultimately followed up
their dreams to be where they are now, with the release of
‘Traveler’ to show for all their hard work. This
Hungarian bunch made up of the remnants of past bands, decided to get
together and judging by most of the songs here, are doing a canny job of
things up to now. The album kicks off with ‘Forever Hard’, the
quiet keyboards very misleading because the song suddenly bursts into
life with same angry guitar work and in your face vocals from Zolton
‘BZ’ Batky-Valentin, sounding as American as an American can be! A
real tub-thumping drum beat blasts ‘Rock is my Name’ into an Early
Kiss-sounding song, especially the bands chanting chorus, the lyrics
could easily have been written by Mr. Stanley, so maybe the fact that
certain members of the band were in the Kiss tribute band, Kiss Forever
Band has left its mark on them? Even
though ‘Stay’ turns out to be a really good melodic rocker, all
gritty guitars and a smart solo on lead by Zsolt Csillik, the over
Americanised twang on vocals starts to get slightly annoying, and when
‘Troublemaker’ sets off with its corny (to say the least!) lyrics,
then it does get annoying. At least the ‘Crue knew exactly what
they were singing about and made it sound much more believable than
this. Fortunately
it picks up a touch due to ‘Traveler’ with the story of ‘living on
the road, never getting old’, and like ‘Voices’ is built around a
familiar sound of Whitesnake, where again the lyrical content is on the
cheesy side and, where on the chorus there’s plenty of name checking,
funnily enough, Mr. Coverdale does get a mention. Not the best
song I’ve heard lately. The
gutsy ‘Two Hearts’ brings things back up all guns blazing, the
drumming by Zoltan Vary at a break neck pace, again some corker guitars
accompanying him as he goes, then ‘Dreamworld’ settles things down a
touch due to the mid tempo feel, where the nice touches on harmonies
show what the band can really be capable of. Now
if you thought Vary couldn’t get any faster on drums think again
because on ‘Live for Tomorrow’ he drums as if his life depended on
it! It's just as well the keyboards take over for a bit, but he
soon gets back up to pace right to the end where surely one of the
others had a cold pint ready for him ‘cos he’ll have needed it. Crowd-swayer
‘Light the Flame’ continues the melodic vein that most of the songs
follow, as does the closing track ‘Time to change’ that has a hint
of Danny Vaughn to it with the acoustic guitar work and that damn accent
again, but what the hell, it’s a good song. Summing
up the album, it's full of songs that come across as if they’d sound
better live than they do on disc, and going back to the beginning of
this review, the music teacher would write a comment in your report book
at the end of term and what he wrote in one of mine says it all for me
about this album, simply…”shows plenty of promise, but please try
harder in future”. Review by: Bob |
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| Tracklisting:
1. Forever Hard
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