CD

I’d call this an unlucky release by AOR Heaven, because the music this band brings has, as far as I’m concerned, nothing to do with AOR.  Instead I’d call this pop music, Britpop, modern rock, although the rock element to me seems very distant.

This album contains tracks of the band’s previous US releases, being four EP’s released between 2007 and 2013.  It sure is radio friendly, but it lacks energy.

If you ask me, this is not an album that should be reviewed for Concrete web, or any other metal site for that matter.

Sometimes you get confused for a reason you didn’t expect. This was the case, for my concern, when receiving a copy of Walk Through Fire’s Hope Is Misery. Reason? That crazy artwork, for Odin’s sake… I’m not sure if I like it (I think I am not truly a ‘fan’ of this kind of visuals), but it surely focuses on depression, pain, dejection, prostration and hopelessness (taken from the collected works of Cihat Aral).

My guess is, lots of visitors of this website weren’t even born when this band started out. After all, Uriah Heep have been around for over 4 decades, and should be named as one of the founding fathers of our beloved music genre, together with Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. And after all these years, the Heep still continue bringing out new albums, and relentlessly touring the earth.

Despite the fact that this is already their fourth album, I had never heard of this band before.  They come from Madrid – Spain.  It seems they have a fan base in Spain, and they have played most, if not all of the major Spanish festivals.

Thunder is one of these bands that seem to have been around since God knows when.  Despite existing for some 25 years, this is only their tenth studio album.  Of course there was a hiatus of some three years, since they split up in 2000, and reunited in 2002, and again disbanded in 2009, only to start playing together again in 2011.

The Nightstalker is an outfit by Sercati’s Steve Fabry, and Wolfshade Records did offer us both the new release (the review will follow soon) as well as this one, 2013’s Against The Anesthesist; and since I am so kind to take care of that older stuff too, please join me…

Against The Anesthesist has a total running time of almost forty minutes and it does not bring the stuff we’re used to – though some purists might notice this project’s grandiose raison d’être immediately.

Rock fans beware of this !  I’ve never been that keen on folk rock, with the exception of a few bands like Big Country or The Dropkick Murphys (although you can hardly say that they play folk rock in the traditional way).

And despite being around for some 27 years I’d never heard of this band, so I guess it’s not a band you hear frequently on the radio.

Steve Rothery is the guitarist, and longest running member of the band Marillion.  This is his first solo-effort, despite being active in the music business for over thirty years (he started in Marillion in 1979).

Reload is a relatively new rock band that was formed in 2012 in Larissa – Greece. The musicians in their line-up are mostly coming from other Greek bands (I’ve never heard of before).  This album war first released on their home market in August 2014, and is now re-released all over Europe. 

Basically what you get here is a collection of AOR/hard rock songs.  The songs themselves are nothing exceptional, but they’re good.  You could say I’ve heard it all before, but that doesn’t matter in this case.  I mean there’s far worse than this out there. 

Once again I will take care of an ‘old’ album, because that’s my way of showing gratitude to a label that cares about music and bands rather than money (though I am sure each single album they will sell, maybe because of this review (?), might be welcomes with open arms; and why not anyway). No, seriously, Aesthetic Death were so kind to offer me this debut of Dutch formation Ortega as part of a hugely interesting parcel, so there is no reason why not to write at least some words about it.