Category Cd Reviews

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Lion Music/Border

Fellow Swedes of long running melodic progressive hard rockers HOUSE OF SHAKIRA are back, now slightly revamped. Originating from 1991 the band has released nine albums, all in all, and a live DVD. Named after a bordello the band are serious enough, and have revised their situation 2007, when their previous full-length album came out. New to the band are drummer Martin Larsson, bass man Basse Blyberg and vocalist Andreas Novak, ex MIND´S EYE. The info says that necessary changes were made prior to begin recording their new album, more focused than ever. Let´s check them out.

The band has changed substantially since last time around. I think the new refrain orientation is very positive. “Opener Brick Wall Falling” has a fine refrain but is not an extravagant opener...

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Former Housemartin and Beautiful South main man Paul Heaton will be on tour in July with his Soul Opera, The 8th. To tie in with this stage performance, the songs have been recorded in the studio and are being released on a CD/DVD package. The album includes performances from the full original The 8th cast, The Southside Sinnaires featuring: Reg E Cathey from US hit series The Wire, Mercury music prize nominee King Creosote, Ivor Novello winning artist Cherry Ghost, ex Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott, as well as sweet soul singer Wayne Gidden, Scottish singer songwriter Aaron Wright, The Earlies Christian Madden, Hull country & western singer Mike Greaves and the wonderful Yvonne Shelton.
The 8th – given a theatrical narrative by award-winning playwright Che Walker (Royal Court and ...

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Sonny Landreth is a blues musician from Louisiana, best known for his slide guitar playing. ”Elemental journey” is his eleventh solo album. It’s an unusual album as it’s a completely instrumental release – absolutely no vocals on any of the songs

There are three guests on the album – Joe Satriani on ”Gaia tribe”, Eric Johnson on ”Passionola”, and Robert Greenidge on ”Forgotten story”.

There is a lot of variety in the album. All the songs have great complex melodies, but there are lots of influences intermingling to create a wonderfully rich collection of tunes. As you’d expect there is plenty of beautiful slide guitar here, but the rest of the music is equally good and all works together perfectly.

I have to say I like this album – which surprises even me as its very rare for an instr...

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Von Hertzen Brothers are a Finnish rock band who over the last decade have released four albums. The band consists of the three Von Hertzen brothers (Mikko, Kie & Jonne), all of whom had been in other bands before teaming up together.
This new release, ”The best of” is as the name suggests, a compilation of their best songs. The album includes songs from each of their four albums.

This is a band I’ve not seen live – I’d hoped to see them when they played the High Voltage festival but due to a scheduling clash unfortunately missed them. Their music is really hard to categorise as its so diverse and a single song can have varying different influences present...

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This is certainly an interesting concept – to take some of the best known classics from English literature – the words of William Shakspeare, and to turn them into songs by setting them to music. It’s one of those ideas that could work brilliantly well, or be a total failure.
As if setting the words to music wasnt a big enough challenge, the decision was taken to use only instruments that would have been around in Shakespeare’s time...

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”Dancer in the fire” is a compilation of songs from Irish singer/songwriter Paul Brady. His music has varied over the years and has included traditional Irish music and folk music with varying amounts of pop or rock influences. Over the last 34 years he has released well thirteen solo albums plus a couple of compilations.
When I heard that Dancer in the fire was a compilation, my initial thought was that it would be the usual sort of compilation – i.e. a ”best of”, but it isn’t...

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Firebirth is the new album from Swiss rockers Gotthard. It’s an album that for a while many people thought would never be made – after the tragic death of the bands singer, Steve Lee in 2010 it wasnt clear whether the band would continue or would go their separate ways. Luckily for fans the band decided that they’d look for a new singer and if they found the right man then they’d carry on. Thankfully they found Nic Maeder and he has joined the band as their new vocalist.
After so many years with the same singer then any change of singer is a big change for fans to get used to as the vocals can have such a huge effect on the sound. Gotthard released the song ”Remember it’s me” which got a great reception from the fans, which must have been a huge relief for the band.

The album opens wit...

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Swedish band The Murder of my sweet took their name from the 1944 ‘film-noir’ “Murder, My Sweet”. They released their debut single in 2009 and followed this with their first album ”Divanity” in January 2010. Now two years later they are ready to release their second album

Singer Angelica remembers the creative process: ”Bye Bye Lullaby” has been a long time coming. We wrote nearly enough songs for two full albums and had to carefully choose these thirteen to truly represent the new, updated The Murder Of My Sweet. This album includes performances from close friends Jesper Stromblad (who you all know from In Flames), Fredrik Akesson (from Opeth) and Peter Wichers (from Soilwork), so it’s a really brave record...

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Lion Music/Border

British traditionalists VENDETTA set out on their second quest for world domination. Their debut was a scorcher, so I guess I have high expectations. New grooves, more complexity and even sampled dialogue is said to be new elements since last time. Let´s check it out.

Guitarist Edward Box has been in the business as a solo artist, but still he opts for an intro with little or no significance on the album. I guess I am a bit frustrated about the new features in the music. But for starters “Veil of Empathy” has a familiar ring to the riff but the somewhat odd idea of mixing touches of U2 with the rather familiar IRON MAIDEN riffage is a concept that will work 20 years from now too...

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Frontiers/BAM

German progressive rock/metal band BEYOND THE BRIDGE has apparently been around since 1999, but for some time they were known as FALLOUT. In 2005 guitarist Peter Degenfeld-Schonburg decided to put some more effort into the band under the title of “The Old Man and the Spirit”. Five years he spent with keyboardist Christopher Tarnow, and the pair later stumbled on producer Simon Oberender (AVANTASIA, EDGUY etc.). Simon brought drummer Fabian Mayer and lead vocalist Herbie Langhans. Old mate Dominik Stotzem completed the lineup on bass. Feale vocalist Dilenya Mar was added after Peter heard her singing jazz in Munich. All of the band are trained musicians, so no time to waste. The album came to being between 2008 and 2011, so this is no quickie...