16. Gillan Future Shock 1981 (Virgin)
Hard Rock
Gillan on fire with sizzling speed and energy.
Album
In the past I’ve often thought of the solo career of Ian Gillan as being about as exciting as that of both Robert Plant and Ozzy Osbourne, his two nearest counterparts in terms of both prestige and era, but since starting this journal I’ve now rejected that opinion completely. Because given the amount of Ian Gillan post-Deep Purple albums that have been featured here, I’d now say that his solo career is actually head and shoulders above the other two quality wise, even though he doesn’t get enough credit in this respect.
Future Shock is also his seventh album would you believe it, since his Deep Purple days and also one of his very best. Prior to this he had done three studio albums with the jazz-fusion inspired Ian Gillan Band and then reorientated himself back to his hard rock roots under the Gillan moniker, where his second album
Mr.Universe (under the Gillan name) had been his best album so far. Its follow-up album
Glory Road was a more mediocre effort and given the quality on offer in 1980 it never even got a look in! But on 1981’s
Future Shock Ian Gillan bounced back with one of his best albums to date and it was also an album that also contained his stable backing band of Bernie Torme-guitar, John McCoy-bass, Colin Towns-keyboards and Mike Underwood-drums.
Future Shock as an album is an all round great listening experience of strong hard rock/heavy metal tracks, which came out when the NWOBHM was in full swing and as an artist Ian Gillan was one of the most revered vocalists around when it came to inspiring that movement. The bulk of the material here initially comes across as no frills hard rock, but on further listens the songs offer so much more and have an interesting change of pace, a great volume level, varied instrumentation, changeable vocals and pumping riffs. The album is largely dominated by its sheer speed and energy, which is always great coming from a veteran artist and in a track like “(The Ballad Of) the Lucitania Express” Gillan puts out one his fastest ever tracks. “No Laughing in Heaven” is one of Ian Gillan’s most humorous tracks and a track like “Sacre Bleu” combines both speed and humour in just 3 minutes and keeping in line with these tracks is a cover of “New Orleans” which either does it for you or not. The rest of the album is made up of great pumping melodic rock issues like “Future Shock” “Bite the Bullet” and “Don’t Want the Truth”. But the best two tracks are surely “Nightride Out of Phoenix” which revolves around its metal riffola and spontaneous synths and then there is the album closer “For Your Dreams” with its ambient and moody feel thanks to the piano of Colin Towns, and it’s possibly my favourite on the album. A large chunk of the songs sound like Ian Gillan has recorded them fully charged up on something, so much so that the normal sounding “If I Sing Softly” actually sounds like an album oddity here. Overall 1981 was a good year for Ian Gillan, as he also released the double studio/live album
Double Trouble as well, which despite being a good album didn’t get included here because of the amount of already strong albums on the list.
Future Shock ranks in the Rock Hard’s “The 500 Greatest Rock and Metal Albums of All Time” book and it’s a book that I’ve never read, but should do so to see what they say about these albums.