Liv Kristine - River of Diamonds (2023)

Country: Norway
Style: Gothic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Apr 2023
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Following very much in the vein of her 2021 EP, Have Courage Dear Heart, this is Liv Kristine in her gothic rock mode, approaching and sometimes embracing pop at one end of the spectrum but also thinking a little about crunching up into metal at the other. While we might expect a lot of Theatre of Tragedy here, the gothic metal band she co-fronted for a decade, given that every original song here was written by Tommy Olsson, who spent three of those years as a guitarist in that band, it's only really approached in a couple of tracks, like Our Immortal Day and Maligna, and never with a real intention to go there.

Oddly, the first words we hear aren't Liv's. There's a male voice on the opener, Our Immortal Day, that functions less as a duet partner and more as an introduction. It belongs to Østen Bergøy, the clean voice in Tristania for a decade who's now with Long Night, also Olsson's current band. He's a perfect presence in this opener, setting us up for what Liv has to bring and supporting her with his velvet voice. My favourite duet partner here is Fernando Ribeiro of Moonspell, who lends a deeply Andrew Eldritch-esque voice to the title track. Liv's husband and sister also show up, the former a tender partner on Pictured Within and the latter less obvious on Love Me High.

The album starts off well with Our Immortal Day but escalates to No Makeup and Maligna, which I would call out as the two standout tracks on the album. The former plays like a waltz, a wonderful groove that's slower than the songs either side of it but contains so much detail to keep it skipping forward elegantly. The latter is a strong song, with symphonic metal in the vocals but goth rock all over the music, upbeat and driving like the Sisters of Mercy, and with tough lyrics about an abusive relationship. It's almost surprising to hear Liv drop an F bomb but it's perfectly placed here.

I've mentioned the Sisters a couple of times now and that's appropriate but there's another name I should throw out too, because this takes a few journeys into pop music, of the progressive sort we might associate with Kate Bush. When the songs are up tempo, we tend to hear the eternal beat of Doktor Avalanche behind them, even if Liv's isn't far off what we'd get if we inverted Eldritch's, the light to his dark. However, when the songs slow down and get playful or introspective, Kate Bush is the influence we hear. She's there on Maligna but she's unmistakable on Gravity and especially on the closing cover of Cyndi Lauper's True Colours.

Liv has always had a crystal clear quality to her voice, as if it's made of air and ice. Gravity is such a tailored song to that crystal aspect, turning her ethereal, as if she's indeed "flying with gravity", as the lyrics suggest. It does heavy up a little late in the song for emphasis, but True Colours is her voice solo with only piano accompaniment. These are songs painted in shades of white, beautifully rendered, and they're a far cry from the gothic metal I first heard her sing but just as worthy.

If you've been paying attention, you'll realise that the majority of the songs I've mentioned so far arrive early in the album and that's because it is a little top heavy. The first four songs are close to being the best four songs, the only one matching them in my mind being the title track, which still sits on the first side, wrapping it up before the tender ballad Pictured Within kicks off the second. That doesn't mean that the remaining songs are poor but the best of them can't match the worst of the first half, which I guess means In Your Blue Eyes because it's the only other song there.

Pictured Within is very well done but it doesn't grab me. True Colours is a stellar cover but it's just Kate Bush singing Cyndi Lauper without any further depth to it. If you twisted my arm, I might call out Shaolin Me as the best second half song. It sounds like a Shaw Brothers movie as it begins with a synth note building the way Pink Floyd might do it. The song grows and somehow floats, as if Liv has found the zone in a kata and nothing else exists but movement. I could imagine her singing in a blindfold for this one.

And so this is another 7/10, the same rating I gave Have Courage Dear Heart. However, there's far more of it, being a full length album, Liv's sixth solo effort and it certainly flies higher. I could have easily stretched to an 8/10 for the first half but it can't sustain that level in he second so that 8/10 surely drops to a 7/10, but I wouldn't go further. Even the least song here is still enjoyable even on a third or fourth listen, even if I'm tempted every time through to cut Pictured Within short to leap back to the beginning.

Anoushbard - Abandoned Treasure (2023)

Country: Iran
Style: Progressive Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Apr 2023
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I don't post many reviews at the 5/10 level or below. That's because I have no interest in being yet another hatchet job critic who just slates everything he doesn't like. There's much too much good music coming out now to spend time focusing on the bad, unless it's a disappointing release by an important name that warrants a warning. One rare 5/10 review that I did post was of Anoushbard's debut album, Mithra, but my rating wasn't reflective of songwriting, musicianship or uniqueness, rather of issues with line-up and production, most obviously that they didn't have a drummer and what I presumed was a drum machine didn't work in the slightest and sounded awful.

That left me in the odd position of recommending the band but not their album. The band seemed to be full of good ideas; had an intricate touch on the guitar, surely in part because both members were guitarists; and found a good balance between quiet sections and heavy ones. Once my review was done, I was happy to put that drum sound behind me but I wanted to hear more from the band. Well, fast forward three years and Sherwin Baradaran and Siavash Motallebi are back with a more traditional line-up. They've added Arman Tirmahi on bass and Nima Seylani on oud, an instrument I'm not used to seeing in metal. There still isn't a drummer proper but there's a guest playing real drums and a real producer capturing them with a good quality sound.

And so this is much closer to Anoushbard sounding like they should, which means that this is worth a lot more than 5/10. The question was always going to be how much. Well, this is easily a 7/10 and I thought seriously about a highly recommended 8/10. The guitars still sound great, with some tidy riffing and some elegant solos. The album begins with an elegant electric guitar over an acoustic guitar, which is an excellent touch. The bass is mostly there as a rumble and a depth to the guitars, but the drums are massively improved, so much so that they're exactly what they need to be, with dips into ethnic sounds too.

In true prog form, it all kicks off with a three part track, The Righteous Ardaviraf, which suggests a story about a journey to the next world because The Book of Arda Viraf was a Zoroastrian text from a millennium ago. Musically, it's an interesting piece, with Preparation the calm intro, a folky and proggy track with a clean vocal. There are no drums until a couple of minutes in and then they're a return to the unusual sound I compared to beating a wall with rushes sound on the debut, the one good aspect to the drumming on that album.

Journey ups the ante, making its quiet sections heavier, introducing the drums in traditional metal form and adding a lot of emphasis. It immediately reminds of Orphaned Land but Queensrÿche too and that means tasty songwriting even before the crunch hits fifty seconds in. Suddenly we're in a metal song but it's not content with staying there, mixing it up until the guitar solo at the end. It's wrapped up by Return, which stays with the Orphaned Land vibe, elegant guitars over tribal drums and a host of tight breaks. There's even a choral moment to wrap it up.

While there's metal in The Righteous Ardaviraf, it's far more prog rock than metal. That shifts with the next couple of songs, which are heavy metal with a serious side of up tempo doom. Destructive Spirit (Angra Mainyu) is more extreme, adding a harsh lead vocal in the form of a confident growl that speaks from a position of confident power. It's inherently commanding, especially in lines like "Your soul is mine!", but the guitars back it up. A clean backing vocal shows up eventually and it's a nice contrast. There's more of the same on Tower of Silence (Dakhma), which shines because of an exploratory guitar solo over solid crunchy riffs. There's some fast double bass drumming here but the guitars don't even attempt to keep up and that makes for an interesting effect too.

There are other tracks here, but the one that I'll call out as a highlight, up there with Journey, the second part of The Righteous Ardaviraf, is the title track. It opens with an unusual atmosphere, the oud of Nima Seylani soft and intricate but playing within an ambience that sounds like a sanctuary for birds, somewhat reminiscent of Staff Benda Bilili recording in the Kampala zoo. Once it finds a pace, there are soft, clean vocals and a brief but evocative electric guitar solo. As on Mithra, these musicians clearly enjoy setting up contrasts and the tender Persian oud music stands its ground in the face of crunchy modern metal.

I'm so happy that Anoushbard have managed to flesh out a line-up. Mithra underlined the promise they have as a band but they simply didn't have the infrastructure to be able to deliver that album in the form it deserved to have taken. This follow-up has that infrastructure: other musicians and a strong production. This is what Anoushbard should sound like and they sound very good to me, one more progressive metal band from the vibrant middle east, but this one hailing from a nation that not only doesn't support rock and metal but often actively suppresses it. I salute the dedication it must have taken to make this band and this album happen. That it's damn good is a bonus.

Burning Witches - The Dark Tower (2023)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Heavy/Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 May 2023
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I've heard a lot about Burning Witches, a Swiss quintet who play a fast and powerful brand of heavy metal, but I don't believe I've heard anything they've done before. And that's on me, because two of their previous four albums were released while I was writing reviews at Apocalypse Later and it seems abundantly clear now that I should have given them a shot. They started out in 2015 and this is their fifth album in only seven years, so they're prolific, but that rapid pace does not result in an inferior release. There's almost an hour of music here and it's all strong.

Sure, a minute of that is dedicated to an intro and there's another minute for an haunted house of an interlude halfway but otherwise this barely slows down for a breath. The only time you'll get an opportunity to relax is Tomorrow, which is the closest thing to a ballad in this style. Otherwise, it's a solid slab of metal, built on a bedrock of classic Iron Maiden before they started extending songs into epics, but with a host of influences to heavy that sound up. Start with Powerslave and pour on a slew of influences, so quickly that they'll often zoom past in glimpses before the next arrives.

Generally, I caught the crunch of Metal Church, the melodic drive of Lizzy Borden and the punch of Arch Enemy, but that's just the start. For instance, I also caught plenty of Judas Priest in the hyper opener proper, Unleash the Beast, but there's Blind Guardian in the chorus and Helloween in the guitar solos, along with some Metallica chug under it all. At the end of the day, it stands on its own as a Burning Witches song and, let's face it, a statement of intent to kick off this album. It doesn't hang around and, while it may remain the most up tempo song after it's all done, it's not by much.

The vocalist is Laura Guldemond, a Dutch singer who joined this group of Swiss musicians for their third album, and she's an excellent front for the band. She has plenty of Doro grit in her voice and a a relish in her delivery that works very well with this material, especially on songs with emphasis and attitude like Evil Witch with its samples to set the bar, and Into the Unknown, where she comes close to a Martin Walkyier approach, spitting out lyrics with venom. However, it's the musicians on the stage behind her that I found myself increasingly focused on, because they're utterly reliable, nailing glorious groove after glorious groove as they barrel along.

I first felt that on Evil Witch, which is a standout track four into the album, but World on Fire isn't far behind and I started to realise how strong the drive is on every song here. I don't know how the two guitarists, Romana Kalkuhl and Larissa Ernst, divvy up their duties between lead and rhythm but, as fun as the solos are, it's the emphatic drive of the rhythm that I found myself amazed by. I can't ignore the crisp production, which helps too, but these two have a habit of building a riff into a juggernaut that's hurtling towards us and has absolutely no intention of stopping.

Once you hear it instead of just taking it for granted, you can't not hear it on every track, from the fast Priest-influenced ones like Unleash the Beast to the slower more Sabbath-inspired songs like Arrow of Time. There's a new Metal Church album out that I'm very much looking forward to, but I started to realise just how much those mainstays of heavy/power metal are going to have to bring their A game to match what Burning Witches did here on songs like Doomed to Die that come right from their songbook.

Add Jeanine Grob's bass to deepen the bottom end and this is a rhythm section so textbook that I'd imagine they're taught in classes. The drummer underpinning them is Lala Frischknecht, who's not just effortlessly there with them throughout but always ready for the magic moment we sit back to admire how tight everything is, because then she'll add another beat to the mix and so increase the emphasis again. As impressive as Guldemond is at the microphone, she's really a bonus in the captain's chair on top of one of the most reliable engine rooms in the business.

I liked this on a first listen, because it's right up my alley, even if I tend to prefer a little more speed in my metal. It was clearly good stuff from the killer opener, but it just got better with every song and every repeat listen. It's clean and melodic, but as powerful and emphatic as power metal gets with a tight delivery that most bands would kill for. How effortlessly tight and heavy is the opening to The Lost Souls, the closer to this album, almost an hour in? I seriously need to check out the four albums that came before this one. I'm certainly not going to miss out the next one. I'm very much on board now.

Edges - The End of the F***ing World (2023)

Country: Belgium
Style: Jazz Fusion
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 31 Mar 2023
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Edges may be a debuting band, but they're a project of a Belgian guitarist, Guillaume Vierset, who has a few solo albums out, along with others with Harvest Group and LG Jazz Collective, plus guest appearances for a variety of other Belgian jazz artists. As that might suggest, this is jazz, but it's a fascinating fusion album because Vierset started playing country guitar with his father, then went to school to study classical guitar and jazz, and diversified from there. He's brought folk music into jazz and a number of songs here play with electronica, rock and even punk.

The vast majority of the album is instrumental, the only vocal piece being the closing title track, a melodious song that's the longest on offer at five minutes but also the most underwhelming, with a lounge music base and almost a subdued Iggy Pop style vocal. It's a far cry from the opener, First Round, which is probably my favourite piece here, a jaunty jazz fusion piece with some fascinating rhythms. It gets a little experimental in its second half but nowhere near to the degree that other pieces will soon relish in. It's a very good entry point to the album.

Of course, if you don't have a background in jazz fusion and you dig this opener, you may be rather confused by Better Call Pam, perhaps my other favourite track here. It starts out as electronica, a pulsing synth that sounds like it's a machine trying but not quite managing to emulate the speech of a human being. There's plenty of glitch early on, but it settles into a comfortable groove, full of movement, as if the piece is walking down the road, all chill and laid back. As it builds, it gets more and more fascinating because the process of walking appears to become more difficult, the stride veering away from what's expected and muscles starting to seize and spasm. Somehow it manages to make it to its destination without tripping over its feet, but it's a constant challenge.

While we wouldn't know this without an explanation, apparently there's a story running through a majority of this album. The first two tracks feature a man declaring the end of the fucking world, a memorable title even with censoring asterisks, because he finds himself torn between a world that is rational and structured and sane and another world "where everything is blown apart". The rest of the album is therefore a struggle between order and chaos, some pieces more structured, but a few far from it. Just as this man thinks he's figured it out on Back, it's time for a Second Round.

And, even though First Round and Better Call Pam are my favourite pieces, I'd give Second Round a place alongside them as a highlight. It starts out delicate and introspective, but gradually finds its way into chaos, the dynamic shift between beginning and end surely the most pronounced that the album gets. In its way, it's the album in microcosm but the album doesn't follow such a direct shift. It wends and weaves and shifts from the world of order to the world of chaos and back again with a playful edge.

After First Round, the most approachable song may be AC Blues, which is tender and fascinating, a lounge music piece to presage the closer but one that doesn't need a voice and whose instruments are constantly interesting. The lounge feel threatens to soothe us into slumber, but nothing being played is willing to let us, so our attention never wavers and we stay very awake and listen actively. I'm reminded here of some of what I've heard from Bill Frisell with some Mark Ribot in there for a bonus.

I don't know any of the musicians, but Vierset played all the guitars and wrote the music, leaving a trio of others behind him. Dorian Dumont may be the most prominent otherwise, as the keyboard player and pianist. Anders Christensen contributes bass and Jim Black the drums, which, in keeping with the overarching concept, often shift from rock structure to free jazz chaos. They cover a lot of ground here, all the way from the punky vibe of I Love Triads to the minimalist, near ambient intro to the title track, simply called Intro, to name just two tracks next to each other on the album.

I may know a lot more about every other genre I've covered this week than I do jazz fusion, but this is a fascinating album that's perked up my day.

Winger - Seven (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 May 2023
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Like most people, I remember Winger from their heyday in the charts in the late eighties. I hadn't realised that they'd split up in 1994, though I'd kind of assumed it, and I hadn't realised that they'd got back together not once but twice, briefly in the early noughties and more sustainably in 2006. While they've stayed together ever since, with very few line-up changes—John Roth joined as a co-lead guitarist in 2001 but otherwise it's just been rhythm guitarist Paul Taylor hopping in and out of the band as he deems fit—they haven't been particularly prolific. This is their first album in nine years and Better Days Comin' in 2014 was their first in five.

The good news is that this is a surprisingly clean and fresh sounding release and it feels great from the outset, with three highlights in four amidst a pretty solid opening five. The highlights are the more energetic pieces, which holds true throughout the album. Proud Desperado kicks off with an impressively clean production, lively but patient riffs from Roth and Reb Beach and huge patient choruses with a soaring vocal from Kip Winger himself. Tears of Blood does much the same but it's even better, building on an almost AC/DC riff with a vocal that grows through a Rainbow style bridge to a big chorus.

These are both excellent early tracks, but Resurrect Me is even better still, an elegant glam metal tinged hard rock anthem. This felt like the best song on the album on a first listen and, given that the lyrics are all about the phoenix that decorates the cover, it's surely the featured song, if not a true title track given that Seven merely counts this as their seventh studio album. Voodoo Fire is a strong track to follow it, a bit looser and sassier and with a tasty a capella closing, and the one I've skipped over, Heaven's Falling, is strong too, a bit softer and thinner but a good song nonetheless.

So far so good but, while the rest of the album can't really match that opening, it doesn't do a bad job of trying, especially given that it features some admirable variety within its mainstream hard rock framework. The best track after these is Stick the Knife in and Twist, much later on, which has a slight Megadeth vibe to its riffs, so plays a little heavier, but is otherwise the same high energy Winger as on Tears of Blood and Proud Desperado. One Light to Burn finds a deeper groove that I found reminiscent of Vow Wow and Do or Die adds some symphonic metal swells while staying in a steady glam/hard rock vibe.

The rest are a little softer in demeanour but still play well, just without quite so much emphasis. It feels odd to say, given that I'm generally not as enthused about the softer songs as those with high energy, but the softest song is probably my other highlight, but it's a real grower. It's Broken Glass and it's the first half of a tasty pairing with It's Okay at the heart of the album. It starts out with a set of keyboard swells and piano notes that we're conditioned to see as signs of impending power balladry and I guess it counts as one of those, but it's deeper than that, building a real groove. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a fan on a first listen but it gets better every time through.

And, quite frankly, so does everything else. Winger went away when grunge came along, like much of my youth, but they weren't so glam metal that they would feel like a modern throwback to that old sound. They were based in New York rather than Los Angeles and they had a more elegant hard rock sound that combined the blues rock of Whitesnake, the arena rock of a plethora of American mainstays and some of that LA glam metal vibe as a bonus. It actually translates very well to 2023, with some modern touches to make it feel contemporary.

In short, I thought it would be good but it's better than I expected. Much of this is an 8/10 album, a rating I'm still tempted to throw at it. However, it shifts softer as it goes with Stick the Knife in and Twist a rare exception on the second half. It's fair to say that I like this more whenever the band up their energy levels and that approach is very biased towards the first third of the album. I don't dislike where the second side ends up and It All Comes Around is an elegant closer, but these songs don't connect with me the way the earlier ones do, so think I'm staying at a 7/10.

Sporae Autem Yuggoth - ...However It Still Moves (2023)

Country: Chile
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
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While Sporae Autem Yuggoth certainly play doom/death metal as advertised, that doesn't give an accurate impression of what they really do.

The doom at the heart of their sound is deep and slow, surely rooted in funeral doom and it's aided by the keyboards of Johanna Sánchez, which add a tantalising visual element to their sound, as if a song isn't just a song but a portal into a mediaeval castle, a torture dungeon or an ancient abbey. I know that most of what she does is texture, but that probably extends to sound effects, like an odd bell or scream or gust of wind. On rare moments when the band speeds up, which they do at some point in most songs, they sound fast but they're actually just catching up to the tempos that many doom/death bands use to begin with.

The death aspect is primarily in the vocals of Patricio Araya, who doesn't sound at all like his fellow Chilean namesake, Tom. Patricio's voice isn't so much a death growl, as a hoarse croak. It's an ache of a voice that adds more to the textures the keyboards are conjuring up, bringing age and history with it, as if he's been stuck in those castles, dungeons or abbeys for centuries. Finally he's got the chance to tell his stories, but he's been so long without a voice that he has to fight to get more out than the whisper at the heart of The Pendulum of Necropath, managing it across the album with a time-honoured rasp.

Sánchez is the new fish here, as everyone else has been in place since the band formed in 2019, and their only previous release was an EP back in 2020 called The Plague of the Aeons, which featured a slightly different line-up: no keyboards, but a second guitarist, Juan Drey, who left a year later. I'm intrigued as to what that sounds like, because the keyboards here often creep in through cracks an additional guitarist wouldn't leave so obviously in place. There are songs when Sánchez sees those keyboards as a sort of second guitar, as on the gloriously titled ten minute epic Colosus Larvae: The Crimson Coffin & The Scarlet Worm. There are points where she fills in like she's a mad organist in a different part of the building who delights in joining in, but surprisingly subtly.

I should add that this is a long album and the length may be its toughest challenge, as it reaches a breathe over an hour, ambitious for a debut album. That length works for me, because this isn't a typical set of songs, it's an immersion into a particular atmosphere and that lingers even after the music is done, so time ceases to have meaning. The fact that this feels ancient, gothic not in music genre so much as in literary genre, aids that because it feels like it's taken centuries to arrive with us. If a song could be dropped, maybe Disintegration would be a good candidate because it's faster and more traditionally built for the most part and so brings us out of that atmosphere a little.

On a more traditional album, it would be a highlight and it's a tasty and mature piece, built out of rollicking riffs rather than atmosphere. It also helps to underline how delicate Disguise the Odious Spirits is on its heels. This is the true epic of the album, running twelve and a half minutes, putting it a couple ahead of Apparition of Internal Odes, Colosus Larvae, Through Dominion to Interlude, a trio of songs that run around the ten minute mark. This is the one among them that truly takes its time to set the scene and ease slowly into a build. The others all tell stories, while the third has fun with the band's roots, hinting at the Funeral March in a less overt way than Candlemass.

And I do wonder which bands combined in their minds to distil this particular sound. It used to be a given that doom/death bands owed a serious debt to Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, but that's not obvious here. I'm hearing a more continental flavour than a British one, finding inspiration in Celtic Frost, Winds of Sirius and, especially as the album builds, Candlemass. I'm sure there are an array of funeral doom bands in the mix too and likely classical composers too, thinking far beyond a Chopin nod to the way they write in such a visual fashion and play with space, especially during the elegant closing instrumental, The Night Ocean. I'll seek out some interviews to discover how they reached this sound.

I'll seek out some interviews to discover how they found this sound. I'll also play this a bit more in between reviewing other albums, because I think it's going to grow on me even more than it has.

Yes - Mirror to the Sky (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
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It's only been two years since The Quest, but Yes had already started work on this, album number twenty-three, before it had even been released, citing a strong creative zone. However, they went for a different approach and, to my thinking, it worked well. There are fewer songs, but they have the time to breathe, even though they don't bloat up to anywhere close to the levels of legendary indulgence they sometimes reached in the seventies. The longest song on The Quest ran a breath over eight minutes, but there are four longer than that here and three of them are highlights.

The result is that everything feels less rushed, even the songs that don't boast epic lengths. As an example, the opener, Cut from the Stars, is merely five and a half minutes, but it feels as natural at that length as All Connected and Luminosity do at nine and the title track does at fourteen. It simply does what it does, which is to be lively and playful within the framework of a song. Everyone shines but I particularly enjoyed Billy Sherwood's highly active bass. All Connected isn't dissimilar but it stretches out the fun. This is playful Yes.

By comparison, Luminosity is more of an exploratory piece. It's as if the two openers put the band onto the walkway in Roger Dean's cover art to gaze into the reflection of stars in such an expanse of water and then improvise music on the theme, but this third piece has them dive in and discover that the water is a portal so they're way out there. For a while, they're content to simply watch the marvels around them with wide open eyes but, by the halfway mark, they've become comfortable enough to join in and jam with the majesty of creation. Eventually, they have to sit back again and let it all wash over them. It's a real journey of a song.

Talking of the long songs, the longest is the title track and I'm not as convinced by it. Of everything on offer here, this is the one that falls into being background music at points, especially during the instrumental second half when it gets all orchestral and resembles a film soundtrack. It starts out well, with a southwestern feel, as if someone inverted the cover art and the ocean turned into the desert. It's outlaws waiting for a train music. There are southwestern touches in Unknown Place as well, combining a Native American sound with a dominant bass.

Oddly, Circles of Time, the sub-five minute piece that wraps up the first disc, feels more like a title track than the actual title track, because it's fundamentally calm and reflective. What elevates it is Jon Davison's voice echoing into Billy Sherwood's like pebbles skipping over a calm pond. I'm not as fond of the short pieces here, but they're still fascinating, especially the album's true closer, an odd throwback to seventies vocal music called Magic Potion. I caught glimpses of Copacabana and wondered how something like that could be translated into a dynamic prog framework. The other surprising short piece is Living Out Their Dream, which oddly sounds like Yes covering Hawkwind.

For me, it's All Connected and Luminosity, the early nine minute songs, and a second disc number called Unknown Place, which runs eight and is easily the most immersive song here. The opening is wonderful, from yet another iconic guitar flourish from Steve Howe, whose work is once again the highlight of the album, not in a grand sweep but in a thousand little touches, to Sherwood's power bass and some simple but emphatic beats from new fish, Jay Schellen. Last time out, the drummer was Alan White, as it had been since 1972, but he passed in 2022 after half a century with the band and was replaced by Schellen, who has been their live drummer since 2016.

Unknown Place isn't just its intro though. It finds one of those deceptively simple vibes that's full of quintessential Yes detail, but also moves into some of the best peaceful moments on the album. There are many of those, so this one isn't alone, but it has a few and they're exactly right. At other points, of course, it focuses our attention on little details that continue to elevate the song on the fifth or sixth listen because we suddenly catch something else that one of these musicians is doing for the first time, usually Howe but also Geoff Downes on a variety of keyed instruments and with Sherwood and Schellen contributing their fair share of wonderful touches too.

This is a much stronger album than The Quest for me, even though it arrives so closely on its heels. Other critics rated The Quest much higher than I did, but one fantastic opening song apart, I didn't connect with it much at all. I connect with this one much more, especially on the majority of longer songs that give a band of serious musicians the opportunity to let their songwriting breathe. I may only give it a single point more but I'm tempted to add another one. This is much more like it.

Savage Grace - Sign of the Cross (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy/Speed Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 May 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Metal Archives | Official Website | Wikipedia

I remember Savage Grace peripherally from their heyday in the eighties. They formed in 1981 with the name of Marquis de Sade, perhaps appropriately given the cover art they would come up with over the years, but quickly renamed to Savage Grace, which is a quintessential heavy metal name. They put out two albums and an EP in only three years but then fell away, eventually ceasing to be in 1992, at the same time as so many other heavy metal bands in the face of grunge. Well, they're back, with guitarist and former lead vocalist Christian Logue hiring a variety of foreign musicians to give him one more shot.

That's probably an unfortunate turn of phrase, because his activities in between attempts to keep Savage Grace a viable entity, apparently include "practicing medicine without a license" under the name of Dr. Richard Santee. Quite why a fake doctor needs an arsenal of military-style weaponry is an open question, but hopefully this album means that he's back on the straight and narrow, with a go forward plan to dedicate himself to music. It also may explain why this Los Angeles band has a Puerto Rican singer and a Brazilian rhythm section nowadays.

If memory serves, they never sounded like a Los Angeles band, even when they were based there in the eighties before moving to New York. There is some of that glam rock sound here in Stealin' My Heart Away and especially in the closer, Helsinki Nights. The former reminded me of a band such as Tokyo Blade who played power/speed metal when I found them but shifted with the climate to find their way into other genres, including glam rock. The latter feels like a cover of a Mötley Crüe song performed faux live by Krokus, but it's actually an original. It's raucous rock 'n' roll and it's a heck of a lot of fun. I'd call it a highlight even if doesn't sound much like the primary approach here.

For a power/speed metal band, that primary approach is old school heavy metal with an occasional burst of speed. The most common influence seems to be Judas Priest, with three songs here taken right out of the Priest playbook. Automoton (sic) is the first, a little slower than the opener, but it builds its energy wonderfully and wraps up at speed. A few songs later, Slave of Desire returns to a Priest sound, lead vocalist Gabriel Colón doing a fantastic Rob Halford impression. A final take from the Priest textbook is Star-Crossed Lovers, the three songs dotted across the album to keep it fresh.

The other obvious influence is Iron Maiden, though Colón only tries a Bruce Dickinson impression on the title track. Maiden are all over the album in moments, as indeed are Priest, but these are a quartet of songs so rooted in their single influences that, like Helsinki Nights, it wouldn't actually surprise much if they turned out to be covers of songs that we've never heard before. What's very telling is that these pastiches are arguably the best songs here, along with the opener, Barbarians at the Gate, which storms into action like it's still 1985 and Savage Grace are leaping at the chance to delve into this newfangled speed metal thing.

The other songs are all decent, nothing letting the side down, but they're missing something that would elevate them to the same level as those I've already mentioned. They're the sort of songs I heard on a lot of Friday Rock Show sessions around the time that Savage Grace were at their peak that underlined how much potential a young band had and why someone really ought to sign them to a record deal. These would make it onto their debut album, probably hindered by poor production to remain an underrated cult favourite, but they'd be forgotten if a killer second or third album showed up because the band had held together long enough to make it.

And so that leaves Savage Grace as a cross between those two scenarios. Half of this feels like the songs that sound good but would be soon forgotten as a band builds, but the other half seems like the sort of material they turned out after they made it to their third album, which, of course, this is. Sure, it's been thirty-seven years since their second, but it's still a third album. Now they're on that milestone, back together as a coherent band and putting out decent material, let's see if the next couple will grow them into something more than a welcome return.