FM - Synchronized (2020)

Country: UK
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 May 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I remember FM from the mid eighties, but not incredibly well. I liked songs like That Girl, which opened their debut album and which was covered by no less a name than Iron Maiden. However, it was 1986 and I was caught up in a golden year, arguably the golden year for thrash metal. In the wake of a gamechanger like Master of Puppets and two blinks away from Reign in Blood, suddenly FM seemed like something my sister the a-ha fan would listen to and I drifted away into the pit.

Of course, they did what they did incredibly well and, with the exception of one decade long hiatus at the turn of the millennium, they've kept on doing it ever since. This looks like their twelfth studio album and their seventh with a consistent line-up. If you haven't heard FM before, they play on the soft side of the melodic rock spectrum, firmly rooted in the radio-friendly melodies of American AOR but with a decent side of soul. This is a band who have covered Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine and done it well enough to count.

For the former, check out the title track that opens up the album. It's so quintessentially AOR that, if they played it now on your local classic rock station, you'd argue with your wife all the way through it about who it is because it sounds so damn familiar but you can't quite place who did it. Did the Eagles cover it? It was great, whoever it was! And then the DJ will tell you it's a new FM song and you'll think, "Who?" but hopefully go out and buy this album because it's worthy.

For the latter, go for Best of Times, which amps up the soul side. It sounds absolutely like a modern white rock band covering a seventies soul standard, but I'd be surprised if it isn't another new song. To be fair, they nail the soul sound well, unlike so many wannabe stars nowadays. Pray starts out like full blown soul, like an evangelical church service in Alabama. Scream Amen for me, Long Beach! It goes for a bluesy vibe after that but rocks hard too. It's a good mix.

This is another generous album, running only a few seconds short of an hour, and there are twelve songs on offer to choose from. What's more, all of them are good ones, to some degree or other. That means plenty of clean cut AOR tunes, many of them feeling like they jumped through a portal in time from 1982. Just check out Walk Through the Fire, with its keyboards, clap samples and heartfelt vocals. It's a rock song but it would play to a pop audience, shorn as it is the guitar that decorates many of its peers, at least until a couple of brief solos late in the song.

This is always rock music, but it walks on the boundaries of a lot of other genres. Most obviously, there's the boundary with soul that's overt on Best of Times, Pray and Angels Cried. There's the boundary with pop that's there on Walk Through the Fire and Ghosts of You and I. There's even the boundary with modern country music, which it never quite crosses but hints that it'll do so often. After all, the Eagles are a country music template now.

My biggest surprise, though, is how quintessentially American this feels. I remember FM as being a British version of American AOR, doing all the same things but with enough of a British accent that they were always a British band rather than American one. Now, they've lost their British accents, as is obvious on songs like Angels Cried. American classic rock radio seems to be a thoroughly American affair but half the bands are actually British and the audience never rumbled that they're not locals. FM sound exactly like a British band who Americans think is American.

I liked this, but then it's really difficult music not to like. Maybe if I'd heard Synchronized or Broken all summer long on heavy rotation, I'd want to write to the station and have them switch in Bryan Adams or the Cutting Crew or someone instead. Right now, after a few listens through, this just sounds like decent AOR of the most radio-friendly type and, on occasion, like with Synchronized, excellent AOR of the most radio-friendly type. You'd do a lot worse in 2020 than turning your dial to FM.

Die Kreatur - Panoptikum (2020)

Country: Germany
Style: NDH
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 22 May 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

While I've enjoyed Rammstein since the late nineties, I wasn't aware of the wider world of NDH until very recently. Last year, I discovered Oomph!, who technically created that genre back in 1994 with their second album, Sperm, so I was only a quarter of a century late to the party. Die Kreatur are new, so I'm in at the beginning this time, but the two key players, Dero Goi and Chris Harms, have been around the scene for a very long time.

Dero Goi is also the lead vocalist and drummer for Oomph! and, as with every other member of that band, he's been there since their founding in 1989. His musical partner here is Chris Harms, the lead vocalist and cellist in gothic metal band Lord of the Lost, a band that he founded in 2007 and has fronted every since. Both these bands are currently signed to Napalm Records, so it can't be too surprising to find this side project there too.

Now, I'm only one album into Oomph!'s back catalogue and I don't believe I'd heard any Lord of the Lost until I went wandering around YouTube today, so I can't remotely be sure here, but it seems to me that this album starts out a lot like Oomph! and gradually moves towards a Lord of the Lost sound. Maybe, when I come back to this review in ten years with better knowledge, I might have to Gibbs slap my younger self, but that's what I'm hearing now.

Early tracks, for instance, are often punchy and crushing, clearly NDM songs but with gothic piano and dark electronica, all driven by fast drum machine beats and eerie keyboard work. The best is surely Die Kreatur, appropriately for a song named for its band. I love the quiet parts as much as the heavy ones and there's a lot of variety within them that I like. Unzertrennlich is another stormer that erupts out of darkwave keyboards and beats, but it's a notch down on the crunchy metal guitar. Zwei 100% does much the same, which makes three out of the first five.

However, as the album runs on, the songs become a little less in your face, while retaining a similar mindset. Some, such as Mensch/Maschine, are highly regimented with slower, fixed tempos and fewer quirky moments. Others, like Was Mir am Wichtigsten Ist, which maybe tellingly translates to What is Most Important to Me, has quirky rhythms but still features much less in the way of crunchy metal. Untergang and Benutz Mich kind of fit here too, as they're mostly songs playing in this middle ground but which also amp up at points to pump metal.

In and amongst are songs that do something different and these grow towards the end of the album. Some lean more towards straight darkwave, eschewing a heavy approach for a keyboard-driven pop mentality with a strong beat. The first is early, Durch die Nacht, but Gott Verdammt and Goldener Reiter come at the end to wrap up the album. The other odd pair are Schlafes Braut and Glück Auf!, which are almost folk ditties played darkwave. The former is a deliciously dark waltz with glorious bass notes and deep vocals, while the latter is more laid back and friendly.

However it's structured, it's a generous album, running almost an hour and, with a pair of bonus pop-oriented remixes, over an hour. I'm not quite sure if this mixture of sounds works as a coherent long term project, but it does sound good and the highlights are excellent. For now, I'm thinking that Die Kreatur are at once a combination of its leaders' main bands and a hesitant departure from them. Let's see if a second album takes a wilder leap.

Firewind - Firewind (2020)

Country: Greece
Style: Power Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 15 May 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've heard Firewind songs off and on for years on online radio shows such as the Wyrd Ways Rock Show and I've always liked their music. However, this may be the first time I've sat down and listened to an entire album. I still dig it. This is clean but strong, in your face power metal, led of course by the guitar virtuosity of Gus G. but with a solid lead vocal from new fish Herbie Langhans, the fifth singer Firewind have had over nine albums.

Welcome to the Empire is a great way to kick things off because it's a great example of what Firewind do so well. The riffs are heavy and urgent and the solos are intricate. The vocals are powerful and battle their way up through the instruments to stake their claim for dominance in the hook-laden chorus. The rhythm section is relentless but feels as effortless at this pace as the rest of the band. That's Petros Christo on bass, who's been in Firewind for seventeen years now, and Jo Nunez on drums, who's now in Lords of Black too.

The good news for me is that it isn't a one off. Only hearing great songs by a particular band on a radio show doesn't mean that their albums live up to that promise, but Devour may be even more fun than Welcome to the Empire, as the core riff is a memorable one and Gus G. is on fire, pun not intended, in the middle of the song. Sure, he can shred, but he tends to not go over the top the way that some (many? most?) shredders do. While this is his band, he knows that it really is a band rather than just a bunch of musicians who sit behind his fretwork flair.

Eleven songs with the impact of those two would be seriously impressive, so I can't be too surprised when Rising Fire and Break Away soften up a little, though only a little. They're still solid, hard hitting songs, but with less unyielding edges and more soft moments where the band can ease the intensity for a moment and Langhans can relax a little more.

I really do like how well Langhans's voice fits the music here. Sure, he's a talented and experienced singer but there are a lot of those out there. It's how the texture of his voice fits with that of Gus G.'s guitars that renders him such a perfect choice for Firewind. It's as if the vocals and riffs are partners in a joint assault and the rhythm section line up perfectly behind them both. It all feels right and natural like they've been playing together for years.

Eventually, Firewind soften up a lot, but they wait until the very middle of the album to throw out a power ballad. It's Longing to Know You and it's not bad at all. I'm not a big power ballad fan and I resist orchestral keyboard swells out of instinct. It's telling that, while this is my least favourite song on the album by a long way, it doesn't annoy me. Gus G. does well here and Langhans shows his range well too.

Having enjoyed everything else, I was concerned about the second half of the album, but it may be even better than the first. All My Life is a real gem, yet another slab of effortlessly classy melodic power metal. Space Cowboy is superb too, with a slightly more hard rock approach behind it. And Kill the Pain wraps things up with the most impact since the two openers. It kicks in like Motörhead, progresses into Accept riffage and ends up as quintessential Firewind.

As I mentioned, I've liked Firewind for a long time but I've never sat down and listened to a full album. I'm now very happy that I have. This is great stuff indeed and I'll happily spring for an 8/10 even with that power ballad.

Kanaan - Double Sun (2020)

Country: Norway
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Apr 2020
Sites: Facebook | Prog Archives

Kanaan are a relatively new band, formed in Norway in 2018, but they're not unafraid to put out material. They issued their first album, Windborne, that year, and have followed up with another two this year, Odense Sessions and Double Sun. I haven't heard the former yet but I've enjoyed this one, which is rather like Pink Floyd had known what stoner rock was in 1975 and kept a closer focus on their spacier explorations of the past.

A combination of A Saucerful of Secrets and Wish You Were Here is a decent place to start and that's Worlds Together. It has the calm pace of Wish You Were Here but a psychedelic layer of je ne sais quoi that takes the result somewhere else entirely. The band are more than able to recreate that sparse beauty but they clearly decided that they wanted to play music that isn't as clean or as nice. The guitar here starts soft and acoustic and ends up like a building site tool.

Not clean or nice is where we really go once the couple of minutes of Worlds Together wrap and we move into Mountain. Ingvald André's drums keep a simple beat as Eskild Myrvoll bass explores an echo chamber like it's on the prowl for a fight and Ask Vatn Strøm's guitar solos around oblivion. After five or six minutes of sheer emphasis, it goes all introspective like it was aiming for the stratosphere and finally burst through into space, where we float in contemplation and under the influence of acid.

The sound is heavier here and could easily be described as stoner rock, but I'd stay with psychedelic rock instead. These are instrumental trips rather than songs and they're less interested in big fuzzy riffs and more in where they can go during these jams. Mountain is appropriately named because it's a behemoth of a jam but it's a jam nonetheless. And, as we move into a more grounded Oresund, we realise that they're playing with jazz here as much as rock. You can always tell from the drums at the start of a track.

The jazz background of these musicians, who apparently met at the Norwegian Academy of Music, is most obvious early in Oresund but it's there throughout the album if we pay attention, even when André finds some ruthless rhythms. The way Oresund builds is just as complex as the first half of Mountain was simple. Worlds Apart finds that complexity from moment one, a jazz eruption of a piece of music that bursts into activity like a new star, only to burn itself out in three minutes, like a celestial herald tasked with announcing the arrival of the title tracks.

There are two of them, almost appropriately given the title. Double Sun I is as calm as Worlds Apart is frantic, at least until the guitar gets heavy in the second half. Double Sun II is another exercise in escalation, throwing a basic idea out there as a riff then continuing to build it for eight minutes until it's far from basic. While it isn't the most ambitious piece of music on this album, I think it's my favourite.

I'd love to be able to explain the sound to you better, but Kanaan do a good job of escaping their influences for the most part. There's certainly a lot of Pink Floyd here, from way back in their Set the Controls era, but there's also a lot of Hawkwind too, not just in the spacey sound effects but also in the sheer drive of Double Sun II, which wouldn't seem out of place on Space Ritual alongside songs like Brainstorm, even if it has no words or bridges. Take those influences and jazz them up and you'll have an idea of where the band are playing in the stratosphere.

I liked this a lot and it got better on repeat listens. Now I need to track down Odense Sessions, which the band released a couple of months earlier in February. It features only four songs, all of them long, and adds the guest guitar of Jonas Munk.

Dennis DeYoung - 26 East: Volume 1 (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 May 2020
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

Dennis DeYoung is a name you may not have heard but I'd be shocked indeed if you haven't heard his voice but wouldn't instantly recognise it if given the chance. Trivia fans will chime in here that he was the lead singer for Styx for almost thirty years and it's his voice that you'll hear on most of their songs, including the most famous ones. What people may not know is that he's released a bunch of solo albums since leaving Styx and this is the first one he's put out in thirteen years.

I'm in two minds about it for reasons I'll get to but, when it works for me, it really works for me, which especially means the first three songs.

The opener, for example, East of Midnight, is easily as slick and catchy as any top ten Styx hit. They had eight of those and it isn't any coincidence that he wrote seven of them. This one is up there with any of them and, if it hasn't been released as a single already, I really couldn't explain why. They don't make commercial AOR any better than this. The only rule it breaks is to be a sliver over five minutes long. That's a radio station no no for a song like this, which ought to wrap up in four at the most.

With All Due Respect is sassy. A quirky intro leads into some real attitude, of the sort that we might not expect from a melodic rocker in his seventies who can't be hurting in the wallet. It's an acerbic and mildly profane look at the state of US politics today without ever being partisan. "With all due respect, you don't deserve no damn respect," he tells American politicians of both political parties and the pundits who prop them up too. It's clever and appropriate and it amused me to realise that the main melody is Unskinny Bop by Poison, as vapid a song as could be compared to this.

Frankly, though, it's A Kingdom Ablaze that grabbed me first and hardest, as it's a gift that keeps on giving. There's a lot to unpack in this song. It's not as immediate or as catchy as East of Midnight and it doesn't grab us by the balls like With All Due Respect, but it's surely the real masterpiece on this album. It takes everything DeYoung has done in the past and brings it neatly up to date without losing any of what worked.

The inevitable catch, as you might be expecting now, is that songs like You My Love and Run for the Roses inherently fade in comparison. Both are good songs, mixing melodic rock with a theatrical mindset that could see them in a Broadway show, but they're simpler and more straightforward and A Kingdom Ablaze is a lot more than that without ever once seeming like it's being too ambitious.

And, frankly, the rest of the album follows suit. There isn't a bad song on this album, but the only song outside the first three that isn't as tethered to the Broadway stage as to a rock album is Damn That Dream. This is another punchy potential single, even before the fingersnaps show up. DeYoung gives an eighties AOR vocal but his band are playing seventies glam rock and that mix works really well.

But, as appropriate as DeYoung would be as a Broadway show songwriter, that just isn't my thing. When The Promise of This Land starts like a showtune, I have to acknowledge how well he performs to piano accompaniment with swells from the orchestra, but it's not my thing. My thing is when the band arrives well over a minute in and gets prog, just to confuse us, with keyboards and guitars and the works.

So this is good stuff and it's often incredibly good stuff, but only half of it is really what I want to hear. But that's me and it might not be you. I'm giving this a 7/10 because the four songs I dig are fantastic and I realise the quality of the rest but, if you love Styx and you dig showtunes too, you need to add at least another point to that, if not two.

Mekong Delta - Tales of a Future Past (2020)

Country: Germany
Style: Progressive Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 May 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Ah, Mekong Delta! This is the band who, odd as it may seem, refused to tell the press or the public who they were when they started out, presumably with the goal of allowing their pioneering mix of prog elements into an energetic but hardly subtle thrash metal sound in the eighties to take the focus. When they had four albums out and prog metal wasn't unusual any more, they gave up the pretense and it turned out that the main man was Ralf Hubert, who ran a record label called Aaarrg. He's still the main man today.

Technically, Mekong Delta have never split up, though they've gone a decade without any new music before and this is their first new album in six years. While Hubert has been the only founder member since 1991 and Martin LeMar is the band's fifth lead vocalist, the line-up seems to have found a semblance of stability. Everyone current has been there since at least 2008 except for new second guitarist Peter Lake, who rejoined in 2018 for a second stint.

Now, while I remember Mekong Delta from back in the day, I may not actually have heard them since then. I remember them as avant garde thrashers, a mix of up tempo thrash, classical nods and experimental weirdness, meaning that they were intricate and progressive but not as accessible as, say, Hexenhaus or Sieges Even. They're still doing that but they're less extreme nowadays, if more varied. The fast and heavy does happen on a song like Mindeater but then there's A Farewell to Eternity, a song that isn't even really metal at all, more prog rock rooted in folk.

It took me a while to get back into Mekong Delta. For a few listens, I found myself struggling with the opener, Mental Entropy, but I did get there. Much of it is its complex rhythms, which keep drummer Alex Landenburg on the hop and everyone else with him. However, the vocals are pretty accessible, LeMar doing his best Bruce Dickinson impression at points. Really, it's prog metal that just happens to be pretty complex. It isn't wildly different any more, the way it was back in the eighties when nobody was doing this.

The more interesting material is still to come and it manifests itself first in A Colony of Liar Men, which occupies a vibrant place somewhere in between Voivod and Queensrÿche. It's what else is going on in this one that makes it shine, though: there's a recurring choral part that's quintessential Yes and the seamless way the band roll in and back out of it is joyous.

These are the first two songs of six, each of which is paired and separated from the others by an instrumental Landscape. There are four of these, which also provide the bookends, and they make me wonder if there's a concept that I'm not seeing. Certainly part of my problem with the beginning of the album is that the first Landscape is an inconsequential waste of a minute, but the others are fascinating.

Waste Land is the second and it's a substantial symphonic piece that almost reaches the seven minute mark. The third is Inharent, just as long but more tentative and atmospheric in its build. Both of these are enjoyable and they break up the vocal songs well, even though it isn't the vocals that makes us need interludes. That leaves Pleasant Ground to wrap up the album and that's the wildest, most overtly classical of the four. I could swear that I know a lot of this but I'm sure that it's not actually another Mussorgsky cover, just the product of people who listen to and channel a lot of classical music.

I wondered how relevant Mekong Delta might seem in 2020, decades after metal caught up to what they invented out of whole cloth so long ago. What I found is that they're absolutely relevant, even if they don't own the cutting edge any more. There are little touches here that elevate them from the bands who grew up learning Dream Theater songs, as their musical knowledge extends not just to Rush and Iron Maiden but to Voivod and Celtic Frost too. To me, that is what elevates songs like Mindeater and The Hollow Men over what most prog metal bands are putting out nowadays.

I know you technically haven't been away, Mekong Delta, but I have. Welcome back!

Canedy - Warrior (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 8 May 2020
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website

Paul Shortino isn't the only American rock legend to be putting out an album under his surname in 2020. Here's one from Carl Canedy, drummer and vocalist for the traditional heavy metal band, the Rods, who put out their debut back in 1980. Their rise, fall and rise is ably detailed within the title track's lyrics: "I fought the Heavy Metal Wars until the Grunge King came and shut my heavy metal doors." But later: "From as far away as Europe, we have heard the cry. It seems their love for what we did then, it never really died."

And, while this is American heavy metal, tried and true, it may well play to the European audience better. I actually like it more than The Rods album I reviewed mid-last year, perhaps partly because it doesn't feel as cheesy and on the occasions that it does, it feels heartfelt, like the title track: "I see my brothers coming, axes gleaming, tuned and true. Once more, I hear the drum beat, and I find my way to you."

It also feels like a real band release, unlike the Shortino album. And that somehow holds true even though Canedy remains the drummer in the Rods, while the other musicians here used to be a band of their own, Totally Lost Cause, presumably with a different drummer. What's more, Canedy's new lead vocalist is Mike Santarsiero, who is also now the lead vocalist with the Rods. It's a tortuous web but the result sounds great here. I hope the recent changes are good ones for the Rods too.

I haven't heard Totally Lost Cause, but this is heavier than it sounds like they ever were and not just because of Charles Russello's crunchy guitar sound and Canedy's thunderous and ever-reliable drums. I particularly enjoyed the evil bass of Tony Garuba on the opener, Do It Now. This is a good mix, which isn't surprising from Canedy, but a staccato drum approach to parts of the song gives Garuba some great moments. It's far from the fastest track I've ever heard Canedy play but it works well as a statement of intent.

Some of the remaining songs add a more commercial edge than I remember from the Rods, Not Even Love and Attia springing quickly to mind, but they're not light because of it. They're still heavy, just with an extra coat of polish, manifested through thoughtful riffing, imaginative drumming and a versatile vocal performance from Santarsiero. He simply has more range than the three members of the Rods, who divvied up vocal duties on last year's album while also playing their own instruments. That said, Garuba does a fantastic vocal job on Hellride, even if it's a more limited, almost rap-based approach than Santarsiero's wider voice.

Most importantly, it feels like the band really cared about this album, one of the gimmes that has to be in place to make a good one. I didn't feel that last year with the Rods's Brotherhood of Metal, which did contain some good material but felt like a retread of old ground rather than a burning desire to create something new. This feels much more like what that could have been and it gets better on repeat listens.

While little bits of this stand out immediately, like the fantastic intro to Hellride, each song elevates itself on a second listen. Lies in particular I glossed over a little on a first time through but couldn't fail to notice it on a second. It's a peach of a track, more complex than many here but never overly so. And, like Lies, these songs don't have high price of entry but do have a fantastic return on investment. After one listen, this was obviously good stuff but, after two, I was hooked.

As Santarsiero sings on Warrior, "But the wise men all say, 'Everything that was gone will be coming around, one more time, again at last!'" I'm glad to see Canedy back on top form, playing traditional heavy music that once more has an audience, and I'm looking forward not only to his next solo album but the new Rods record too. It looks like it'll be called Shockwave and it's on the way.

Shortino - Make a Wish (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Apr 2020
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

My Ron Keel Band review raised a few eyebrows as Keel is one of those names that so many know but haven't heard in a long time. So here's another: Paul Shortino. He also seemed to be everywhere in the eighties, not just as the singer of Rough Cutt, but as Kevin Dubrow's replacement in Quiet Riot and as one of the singers on the Hear 'n Aid single. Since I last heard the name, I see that he had a stint in the reformed King Kobra, singing on two albums, and a slew of solo or collaborative albums. This is his first solo effort in just over a decade, preceded by the Shortino album Chasing My Dream in 2009.

While it's only Shortino in the band name this time too, this seems to be a collaboration with Japanese guitarist Nozomu Wakai, who's best known for his power metal band Destinia. If I'm reading it correctly, he's the only actual member of Destinia, so he solicits the help of guests like Ronnie Romero of Rainbow, Marco Mendoza of Thin Lizzy and Tommy Aldridge of pretty much every rock and metal band ever. Shortino and Wakai took the same approach here, as everyone but them here is a guest.

The guests here are also major names. For instance, the opening cover of the old Stephen Sondheim standard, Send in the Clowns, features Mendoza on bass and Pantera's Vinnie Paul on drums, the song recorded shortly before he died in 2018. It's a tricky song because of the metre and it's hardly a hard rock song to begin with but this works really well, not least through Shortino's memorable vocal fry. This is a great way to remind us of what he can do.

Shout and Pride is also a great way to escalate from that into a blistering heavy rock song. This is a hard rock album but it dabbles in heavy metal at points and this is one of the most overt, featuring some serious shred from Wakai. This time, the bass comes courtesy of Uriah Duffy, ex of Whitesnake, and Ryuichi Nishida of Loudness provides the lively drums. This is powerful stuff, very eighties in style but with a neat 21st century production job.

Nishida does a fantastic job here, though he's not the only drummer. I love Feeling Lucky CU in LV too, for many of the same reasons as Shout and Pride, and that's another of his. The bass player there is Peter Baltes of Accept and they make for such a killer rhythm section that I found myself following them instead of Shortino's vocals. It doesn't hurt that Baltes is given many opportunities to shine and the mix helps him to no small degree too.

Another solid rhythm section here is the combination of Phil Soussan on bass and Jay Schellen on drums, which shows up on three songs; the former used to play for Ozzy and the latter plays for Yes live. They're a good pairing too, even if my least favourite song here is surely one of theirs; it's the power ballad of a title track and, while it's not sickly sweet, it's still plenty sugary and it feels out of place amongst heavy rock numbers and almost power metal songs.

One wild factor is how the guests affect the style of the songs and I wonder how much of it was deliberate. Schellen's involvement doesn't make any song here sound remotely like Yes but Baltes carries an Accept vibe with him to Feeling Lucky CU in LV and it isn't just Rowan Robertson's presence on Eyes of the Wizard that makes it sound like a Dio song. Even the title advertises that; were you to look at the track listing and guess at which was the Dio-esque song, you'd pick that one without hesitation. When Doug Aldrich, who used to be in Whitesnake, shows up to play guitar on Beat of My Heart, even Shortino himself starts to sound like David Coverdale.

On one hand, this makes some of these songs interesting and diverse but, on the other, it threatens to change this from a coherent rock album to a game in which we shuffle musicians around in our minds and wonder how they might sound in different combinations. How would Baltes have worked with Schellen? How would Rise Up and Be Strong and Beat of My Heart have changed if they'd swapped guitarists, so Carlos Cavazo took on the Whitesnake song but Aldrich the more straightforward heavy rock number?

And, to my mind, that distracts from the music. This tells me that Shortino still sounds great and he has a lot of talented friends, but he isn't quite sure what he wants to do musically right now. I like this album and it's at least predominantly new music, unlike the Ron Keel Band album, but it seems to me that Shortino ought to figure out who he wants in his band along with Wakai and sit down with them to write a new album. For all the great touches here from varied musicians, I'd wish for Baltes and Nishida.