Simone Appolloni's Album Reviews
2021's Surface Sounds is a replica of their past works.
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Iceland's Kaleo are a clone of John Mayer, Imagine Dragons and Radiohead, as shown by their 2016 album, A/B: generic Post-Rock balladry with hoarse, Blues-like vocal travesty and minimal, skeletal songwriting with more focus on digital instruments than melody.
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Featuring entirely original material, 1970's Mad Shadows is penalized by inferior production with an excessive mid-range peak and even softer, thin drums. The material is filled with lengthy, gentle Folk/Country balladry with hoarse, shrieked vocals ("No Wheels to Ride", "You Are One of Us", "I Can Feel", "When My Mind's Gone"), with one piano-driven boogie up-tempos ("Walkin' with a Mountain") and two somethings-in-between ("Thunderbuck Ram", the half-groovy "Threads of Iron").
An unbalanced effort, with so much ballads performed with such a subpar vocal performance that suggest the band still wasn't sure which musical direction to follow.
Highlights: "Thunderbuck Ram", "I Can Feel".
An unbalanced effort, with so much ballads performed with such a subpar vocal performance that suggest the band still wasn't sure which musical direction to follow.
Highlights: "Thunderbuck Ram", "I Can Feel".
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A minor hitmaker act, but considered one of the pivotal bands of the UK "glam" rock movement, Mott the Hoople didn't release much material, and are reserved mostly as 70's memorabilia. Formed as The Doc Thomas Group by Mick Ralphs (R.I.P. 2025), Stan Tippins and Pete Overend Watts (R.I.P. 2017), the band was originally formed as a concert residency for a resort in Italy. They were spotted by Island Records band manager Guy Stevens, recruited Ian Hunter Patterson as vocalist/guitarist, changed name and recorded their self-titled 1971 album in a week.
Inspired by The Rolling Stones, The Kinks (an instrumental cover of "You Really Got Me" start things off), Cream and traditional/Blues Rock, the band is on fire right on this debut, which has dual guitar and blazing distortion not unlike Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple with more organ/keyboards. Because of lack of material, half of its four tracks are covers, done competently (Hunter, despite its "advanced" age, was a hell of a vocalist), but still not diverging dramatically from the originals. The original consist of fluffy, Bob Dylan-derived acoustic guitar balladry ("Backsliding Fearlessly", especially the vocal lines) and generic proto-metal, solo-heavy riffing ("Rock 'n' Roll Queen"), more boogie pentatonics ("Rabbit Foot and Toby Time") and a climatic, half-symphonic epic that's the only highlight ("Half Moon Bay"). Production is top-notch for the year of its release (drums sound soft due to lack of microphones, though).
With the exception of the lone, great highlight, the album may interest mostly vintage-obsessed listeners, more than anything else. Better starting with other releases.
Highlights: "At the Crossroads", "Half Moon Bay".
Inspired by The Rolling Stones, The Kinks (an instrumental cover of "You Really Got Me" start things off), Cream and traditional/Blues Rock, the band is on fire right on this debut, which has dual guitar and blazing distortion not unlike Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple with more organ/keyboards. Because of lack of material, half of its four tracks are covers, done competently (Hunter, despite its "advanced" age, was a hell of a vocalist), but still not diverging dramatically from the originals. The original consist of fluffy, Bob Dylan-derived acoustic guitar balladry ("Backsliding Fearlessly", especially the vocal lines) and generic proto-metal, solo-heavy riffing ("Rock 'n' Roll Queen"), more boogie pentatonics ("Rabbit Foot and Toby Time") and a climatic, half-symphonic epic that's the only highlight ("Half Moon Bay"). Production is top-notch for the year of its release (drums sound soft due to lack of microphones, though).
With the exception of the lone, great highlight, the album may interest mostly vintage-obsessed listeners, more than anything else. Better starting with other releases.
Highlights: "At the Crossroads", "Half Moon Bay".
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Kasparek disbanded Running Wild in 2009 when Peter Jordan, the last of his collaborators, left the line-up. However, he secretly kept recording new music, releasing Shadowmaker in 2012, falsely crediting Jordan as guitarist (for gigs only) and marketing as a band return... but the guy is still not touring (a handful of concerts held since then). The resulting stuff is a continuation of his repetitive-as-hell fixation on Deep Purple/Iron Maiden/Twisted Sister-like Hard Rock with more mundane themes, grungy production, unrealstic guitar/drum sounds and a cover artwork that looks like a Combine soldier from the universe of Half-Life (so long for "pirate metal").
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2005's Rogues en Vogue is a rehash of their previous efforts with such an extreme amount of chorus and phaser in the guitar enough to sound like a parody of 80's glam.
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