Music Banter - View Single Post - AOR: Anteater's Guide To The Best Of 80's Melodic Rock

Anteater · 12-07-2010, 06:31 PM

10.

Phenomena – S/T (1984)

1. Kiss Of Fire (4:54)
2. Still The Night (3:28)
3. Dance With The Devil (4:44)
4. Phoenix Rising (4:44)
5. Believe (5:53)
6. Who's Watching Who (3:41)
7. Hell On Wings (3:56)
8. Twilight Zone (4:14)
9. Phenomena (2:06)

Where better to start on our odyssey into 80's overindulgences that a concept album featuring lead vocals from the former mid 70's singer/bassist of Deep Purple?

That said, Phenomena itself was certainly an interesting..phenomenon when it reared it's head initially in the early 80's. So much so that Kerrang! magazine and a variety of other publications ran front-page stories on it. It's both a band and a multimedia project created primarily by Wilfried Rimensberger (the founder of Metalhammer magazine), his brother and a few other producers in order to tell some kind of batshit horror story through audio/visual media. The result of their collaboration was a revolving door that would bring in bucketloads of prominent musicians over the years (such as Queen guitarist Brian May and former King Crimson vocalist John Wetton), as well as the creation of a film script which would gain interest from various prominent actors and actresses over the decades, including Sean Connery!

This debut recording, however, is arguably the strongest musically of the Phenomena six-album discography (thus-far), so we'll focus on that.

AOR is a rather troublesome acronym for many people -- nobody seems to know exactly what it stands for (generally either Adult-Oriented-Rock or Anthem-Oriented-Rock). The style's trademarks are all over this record though -- slick production, razor sharp guitar, multilayered vocals for both lead and backup vocalists, etc. Plus there's that general 80's reverb hangin' around which sounds so damn cool to these 2010 tired-of-fuckin'-Autotune ears. Quite oomphy indeed!

Although these nine songs are supposedly telling the story of a certain supernatural phenomenon taking place, you probably won't care too much about the lyrics when Glenn Hughes is on the mic: his voice is one of the most distinctive and well-timbred in the world of 80's melodic rock. His delivery is often accentuated by floating keyboards and the ever-present guitar bravado of Mel Galley, and the songs aren't half bad themselves. In particular, 'Still The Night' is one hell of a mid-tempo rocker and 'Dance With The Devil' features a heavily processed fiddle which sounds utterly deranged but becomes extra awesome when the guitar comes in a bit later and follows the same melody line. Excellent!

Basically, this record has a vaguely campy haunted quality to the proceedings, kind of like Journey gone Dead Can Dance in a weird way. That's not to say any of it isn't cheesy, but there's a certain gregariousness at work here that lets Phenomena weather their decade a little better than most of their contemporaries. And that, friends, is why you should give this debut record a look-hear. It's as credible an introduction to AOR as you are going to find!