  
Frontiers/Playground Music
This is an eagerly anticipated album, on my behalf at least. Behind the flat moniker hide Messers.; Joe Lynn Turner, vocals, Tony Franklin, bass, Carmine Appice, drums and the, to me, lesser known Karl Cochran, guitars. The pedigree of the project is undeniable with the members having been in bands like RAINBOW, DEEP PURPLE, BLUE MURDER, THE FIRM, OZZY OSBOURNE, VANILLA FUDGE and ACE FREHLEY. Obviously they aim for a classic sound that has not lost touch with today, but with these guys I´d settle for an album firmly seated in the past...
Opener “Get Back My Crown” has a DEEP PURPLE touch to it, not least thanks to the keyboards courtesy of Frontiers stalwart Alessandro del Vecchio. Of cause there are pasrts of JOE LYNN TURNER solo and latter day RAINBOW too. Joe really strain his voice at times, the riff is simle and effective and the rumours are there. This songs tells me it´s time for RITCHIE BLACKMORE to once more pick up his strat. Among all the releases of 2014 this is the benchmark for a quality album with songs clearly above the middle. The only time I start wondering is the overly FOREIGNER “You Are the Music”, but that is probably due to the sheer surprise of this lot copying a band neither of them has played with. The joyful playing in songs like “Lhasa” with it´s world class bass line, “Maybe Tonight” that could have been a wrongly picked leftover from “Bent Out of Shape”, “Fire and Ice” with a style that could have been part of the set Joe once played with YNGWIE J. MALMSTEEN, “On the Way to Paradise” a song that I believe Jon LORD (R.I.P.) would have approved of in DEEP PURPLE, and the assumed final flirt with Ritchie, “Stranger in Us All”, one of the heavier numbers on the album. The rest are all above average but slightly inferior to the ones mentioned above. This one is immediately album number one of 2014 - in my world at least.
Track List
Get Back My Crown
This Is Who I Am
Fire and Ice
Don´t Cry No More
Lhasa
Devil in Disguise
You Are the Music
Piece of Mind
Maybe Tonight
On the Way to Paradise
Our Love Is Not Over
Stranger in Us All
www.frontiers.it www.facebook.com/ratedxrocks
|
