| CD REVIEW Frost* |
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Band : Frost* Following the release of their fantastic 2006 debut album Milliontown (review by yours truly posted 18/09/2006), Jem Godfrey (songwriter, producer, singer and keyboardist) took his band consisting of John Mitchell (guitar & backing vocals; of Arena, The Urbane, Kino, and It Bites fame), John Jowitt (bass; also of Arena, and of Jadis & IQ repute), and Andy Edwards (drums; of IQ, The Wikkamen, Priory Of Brion, Ian Parker Band) on a short road trip to play selected pieces from the album, supporting Pallas on a four date tour of Holland and Germany in October 2006. Shortly after that tour, Jem announced on the band’s MySpace that following a couple more gigs, the band would be dissolved. What he learned from that brief stint and the reactions to the album, was that people felt his voice was rubbish (huh?), so perhaps that got stuck in his throat somehow? Anyway, in early 2007 he revived the band and went out on a search to find someone to take over lead vocal duties. The replacement was found in the relatively unknown Declan Burke, whom also plays a mean bit of acoustic guitar to boost! The music for the new album was written during 2007 and 2008. Originally Jem had written some 25 songs, not even for Frost*, but once he’d decided to do another Frost* album, he had to Frost*-ify up a couple of songs with more involved arrangement ideas, guitar and keyboard solos. The end result is simply overwhelming, and exceeds the expectations set with the debut album! In fact, Frost* is not a repeat-Milliontown at all! Although there’s the fact that we’re still talking Progressive Rock/ Metal here, there’s some keyboard sound additions previoussly unheard of. And what with two backing singers in the band (Jem reserved the right to still do thàt, you know), there’s plenty of moments where the harmonic backings step out on a life of their own, making for layered vocal passages which, in spite of their intricately woven aspect, always remain melodic. In accordance to the genre’s typifications, calmer passages (usually piano-driven) alternate with more excited and even some bombastic explosions…and I have to say that, personally, I’ve grown to listen to this album as a whole music piece…not as a collection of its individual 9 songs! Different from Milliontown also, is that there’s only one longer track on the new album, that being the 16-minute album closer “Wonderland” (on the other side of length, the 66-second piano ballad “You/ I” is definitely the shortest song in the Frost* catalog to date). You can listen to a sample from the album at myspace.com/planetfrost (in July three demo songs from the album were posted there, now deleted from the media player), but there should still be additional material available from the recording session at YouTube, where Jem posted several “reports”. The album should be available in two formats: one regular, the second with bonus (3 hours, 36 minutes) DVD. For the time being, only a couple of (loose) gigs are announced, nothing tour-wize what-so-ever! To finish this off, a quote by Jem: “…bands like Man On Fire, Lazuli or Tinyfish are admirably pushing the boundaries of Prog…I hope we will be counted among them eventually!”…well, as far as I am personally concerned, Frost* already counts among the best in their field! 98/100 Tony. |