Boston’s self-titled debut album is rightly heralded as a melodic rock classic. The combination of Brad Delp’s soaring voice, a wall of vocal harmonies and the distinctive guitar work of Tom Scholz has allowed the album to (almost) transcend the ages. While it doesn’t necessarily sound timeless, it certainly still sounds like an album recorded some time after its mid-70s origins, such is its sharpness. The band’s next works (1978’s ‘Don’t Look Back’ and 1986’s ‘Third Stage’) are almost as good, thanks to Scholtz and his obsession with perfection. After a long delay, the band returned in the mid 90s for ‘Walk On’, a decent selection of pomp-driven songs with Orion vocalist Fran Cosmo doing a grand job of replacing Brad Delp on vocals. It mightn’t have quite been up there the Boston of ’76, but then it didn’t pretend to be – it was a good enough record in its own way. From this point on, very little was heard from the Boston camp until the release of ‘Corporate America’ (featuring both Delp and Cosmo alongside Sholz) in 2002. It was a record which gathered mixed reviews. Too much time had passed.
Tag Archives: aor
ANGELICA – Thrive
Since this debut record from Angelica Rylin pays homage to her childhood heroes Robin Beck and Ann Wilson, it’ll come as no surprise that the album, therefore, ploughs a well-worn furrow of melodic rock. With Frontiers Records regular Daniel Flores handling production duties/drums/song-writing and other regulars Alessandro Del Vecchio and Robert Sall also having a hand in proceedings, the whole thing feels like an all-chums-together affair. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but obviously the combination of a familiar team and a rigid musical blueprint makes ‘Thrive’ feel wholly predictable. So, given that this album breaks absolutely no new musical ground whatsoever, why should you check out Angelica, when there is so much other rock music out there vying for your attention?
IMPERA – Pieces Of Eden
In 2012, session drummer JK Impera’s eponymously named band released ‘Legacy of Life’, a solid melodic rock offering also showcasing the talents of much-loved guitarist Tommy Denander and European vocalist Matti Alfonzetti (best known to most as the frontman of Myke Gray’s Jagged Edge in the early 90s). With a first class guitarist and a great singer (who rarely gets his due for having a voice that’s held up extremely well over the years), the project had the right ingredients to please many classic rock fans. While the songs were of a tried and tested formula, most of the material was strong – and Alfonzetti’s voice just gave the band an extra edge, often missed from so many other “second-tier” melodic rock acts.
HAREM SCAREM – Mood Swings II
Almost any melodic rock fan will tell you that the first two Harem Scarem albums are classics. The band’s 1992 debut and ‘Mood Swings’ – their harder sounding follow up from 1993 – set out the Canadian outfit’s stall as a band to be reckoned with. Twenty years on from ‘Mood Swings’, someone in the Harem Scarem camp decided the best move to celebrate the milestone anniversary would be to re-record the songs…
FIND ME – Wings Of Love
Bringing together the talents of Robbie LeBlanc (Blanc Faces), Daniel Palmquist (Xorigin) and noted session drummer/engineer Daniel Flores, Find Me is a project with strong foundations. With a selection of songs written by Frontiers Records in-house regulars Allesandro Del Vecchio and Tom Wilson and contributions from Issa and Erik Mårtensson, the whole package is designed to be the AOR fans dream. Usually when such big ambitions are chased such projects falter, but almost everything about Find Me works excellently.