The Playlist of Life --- Trollheart's resurrected Journal

11-09-2011, 09:08 AM	#11 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,996	Some albums are excellent, some are really dire, and then there are the ones in the middle. You don't hate it but you don't love it. You might play it the odd time, but you're not going to be that pushed. It's in your record collection, you wouldn't get rid of it, but it will probably be a long time before, if ever, you listen to it all the way through again. Welcome to “Meh...”, the new section where I'll be reviewing albums that did not impress me, but nevertheless are not bad enough to qualify for the “Nice song, shame about the album!” section, and which are unlikely to ever make it to the “Last Chance Saloon”. These are the albums I know I was not blown away by, but weren't so bad that I'd never listen to them again. At best, I might lift a track here or there for a playlist, but that's about it. Prepare to be underwhelmed as we delve into my barrel of mediocrity, not quite scraping the bottom... The power and the myth --- House of Lords --- 2004 (Frontiers) This was an album I had high hopes for. Don't ask me why: I had never heard of the band before, but something about it just piqued my interest and I decided to give it a try. While not awful by any means, it nevertheless did not exactly send me searching avidly for the rest of their catalogue. It is in fact their fourth of, to date, eight studio albums, but even the appearance of Dream Theater's Derek Shernihan and the lovely Robin Beck could not lift this album above the realm of the ordinary for me. It opens with “Today”, nice humming synth and lovely little picked classical guitar, the synth getting louder and more insistent until it's joined by electric guitar and drums, and the song gets going. The vocals of James Christian, who also plays lead guitar, swing between a sort of Nickelback growl and a generic AOR style, but effective and also very clear. Nice guitar solo too. It's an impressive opener, but then “All is gone” seems to be a fairly generic rock song, nice idea but undeveloped, with an almost Free-like melody, failry predictable and a bit of a disappointment after the first track. “Am I the only one” has a nice oriental feel to the keyboard opening, then slips into a sort of semi-ballad style, understated, not bad. It goes along nicely, but then ends very badly, quite unexpectedly. It's followed by a hard rocker, “Living in silence”, but this goes from prog rock to almost heavy metal: hard to place this band, whom I had taken as being a progressive rock band at heart, but find now to be more straddling AOR and hard rock with, it has to be said, not too much confidence on either side. A balancing act that constantly looks in danger of failing, sending the guys tumbling through the air and down to the ground. The title track, then, comes over all prog-rock, a powerful instrumental with organs, keyboards, synth and rumbling drums, wailing guitars and warbling keys going at it hammer and tongs. This then runs into the eastern-favoured, Zep-like “The Rapture”, which gives way to the gentle, almost acoustic “The man who I am” (bad grammar too!), probably one of the best tracks on the album with its softly keening synth and its laidback guitar, Christian singing the best I've heard him so far. I believe Shernihan's expertly-crafted keyboards are what makes this song so good. Then we're into “Bitter sweet euphoria”, a mid-paced rocker with busy guitars and a nice solo, but then “Mind trip” falls over into hard rock/almost-punk territory, and it just doesn't work for me. Just sounds a little too confused. Closer “Child of rage” mimicks Guns 'n' Roses' version of Dylan's “Knockin' on Heaven's door” with its opening, but it settles into a nice little ballad with country leanings, great acoustic guitar and organ taking the melody until the electric guitar kicks in as the chorus hits. Very much in the style of Bon Jovi, Poison or indeed the aforementioned G'n'R, a kind of “cowboy ballad”, the sort that tends to be popular with heavy rock bands, and to be fair, they do a good job on it, and it's a very decent closer. But there are too many low points and nothing special enough about this album to earn it any proper points. Not, as I said at the introduction, a bad album by any means, but nothing great either. And so it earns the dubious honour of being the first album into the “Meh” pile. I don't doubt there'll be plenty more. TRACKLISTING 1. Today 2. All is gone 3. Am I the only one 4. Living in silence 5. The power and the myth 6. The Rapture 7. The man who I am 8. Bitter sweet euphoria 9. Mind trip 10. Child of rage __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018