ROCK BLOG #27 - First album reviews of 2024: Exit Eden, GOTUS, Autumn's Child, Russell - Guns, Robert Hart, Grand, Honeymoon Suite.

 We’re 8 weeks into 2024, and it’s time to take a look at the albums released so far in the genres we cover. Or at least the ones I’ve heard. 

I have to say that this year’s releases have been a little underwhelming. It’s safe to say that the ”Album Of The Year” hasn’t been released yet, nothing that I have heard so far has excited me that much. Well, I did have a sneak peak preview of the second REMEDY album to be released by Escape Music later this year, and that one IS a strong contender, even though what I heard was merely an unfinished version.

I liked the first EXIT EDEN album released a few years ago. It was an all-covers album and featured 4 female vocalists, Amanda Somerville, Anna Brunner, Clementine Delaney and Marina La Torraca. Somerville has left the band late last year, and they’re continuing as a three-piece group from now on. On the new album ”Femmes Fatales” (RRRR) they’re continuing with a mix of covers and original songs, mostly written by Anna Brunner together with Hannes Braun of Kissing’ Dynamite, who is also the producer of the album. The cover versions are very good, maybe "Separate Ways", "Poison" and "Alone" are kind of safe choices but they're well executed. Marillion's "Kayleigh" gets a symphonic metal treatment too, and I'm not really sure that it works. Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin" and Mylene Farmer's "Désenchantée" are very different to the originals, and I like these metallized versions. The original songs are mostly very good, theatrical melodic metal songs not that far from Avantasia's output. At the moment, my pick out of the originals is "Buried In The Past". Tomorrow it might be something else...

The (mostly) Swiss supergroup GOTUS features former members of Gotthard and Krokus, and they play just the kind of music one might expect - hard rock! Vocalist Ronnie Romero was in the Gotthard offshoot Coreleoni and guitarist Mandy Meyer was in Gotthard for several years, not to mention Asia, Krokus, Katmandu, Cobra and other projects. Their self-titled album includes versions of Gotthard's "Reason To Live" and Katmandu's "When The Rain Comes", and it's a safe bet for fans of Gotthard, Whitesnake and hard rock in general. It probably won't be the best album you'll hear this year, but solid stuff anyway. RRRr.

Between 2003 and 2018, Michael Erlandsson released 14 albums with Last Autumn's Dream. When that band went on a break, he formed AUTUMN'S CHILD and "TELLUS TIMELINE" (RRRR) is their fifth album.  If you add a couple of albums with Love Under Cover and his solo work, he's been a reasonably busy fellow, wouldn't you say? The new album is a good example of the high level of songwriting he's managed to maintain, along with his co-writers. Most of the songs on this album are catchy AOR tracks with sharp hooks, my favourites being "A Strike Of Lightning", "Gates Of Paradise" and "Never Surrender". Then again, there are a few songs with strong Beatles- and early Abba-influences which don't really push the right buttons with me.

RUSSELL - GUNS is yet another project masterminded by Frontiers Records. The main characters  are Jack Russell, best known as the vocalist on Great White's biggest albums and Tracii Guns, of LA Guns fame on guitars. The songs are written by Alessandro Del Vechhio, Tommy Denander and a few others, not Russell or Guns though. The songwriters have probably had a mission to mix classic Great White sound with LA Guns' sleazier style, and I guess they've somewhat succeeded in that.  It's just that the songs themselves aren't very memorable, apart from a couple of exceptions. It's a shame, because Jack Russell still sounds good and I'd love to hear him sing better material. Rating for the album "Medusa": RRr.

ROBERT HART's new album "Circus Life" (RRR) has been written by FM's Steve Overland and Steve Morris (Heartland, Shadowman, Lonerider etc), who are no strangers to bluesy classic rock style. Hart himself is a former Bad Company singer, so this combination makes sense. He released a couple of more AOR'ish albums back in the day, and compared to those, his delivery is much rough-edged these days. There are some AOR touches here too, with Steve Overland providing smooth backing vocals and melodies. A few tracks wouldn't sound out of place on any of the latter-day FM albums, if sung by Overland, but I guess that's no surprise.

"Second To None" is the second album from GRAND, a Swedish AOR group, and it's a bit of a roller coaster! The band definitely doesn't stick to a formula, they are taking risks with their songs. I applaud their bravery and versatility, but at the same time I have to admit that I like them the best when they don't venture too far from AOR. The album starts with three perfectly good AOR tracks "Crash & Burn", "When We Were Young" and "Leave A Scar", but then something strange happens. They hit rock bottom indeed with the plodding, bluesy "Rock Bottom", and "Sweet Talker" isn't much better. It sounds like an experiment to mix Van Halen with Toto, not entirely an unappealing idea... but this time it doesn't work. "Lily" is probably a favourite to those who enjoy the smooth sounds of yacht rock, but for me it's the third miss in a row. Thankfully the band bounce back with the killer "Kryptonite", possibly my favourite track of the album. Among the remaining tracks there's another gem called "Achille's Heel" and the ballad "Daze Of Yesterday", which reminds me of "Edge Of The Century"-era Styx. Anyway, there's more good than bad, and at their best GRAND lives up to their name, so my rating is RRRR.

HONEYMOON SUITE were serious contenders to make it to the big league back in the eighties. The were a major success in their home country Canada, but things didn't work out that well elsewhere. The band wasn't very active in the nineties, but they returned to the scene in 2002, and have been sporadically active ever since, with new releases every now and then. In 2017 I was close to seeing them live at Rockingham in the UK, but they cancelled their appearance. Their new album "Alive" (RRRr) has been a long time in the making, the first single from it was released way back in 2019. What's good about it is that while the band has taken a lot of modern influences, they still sound like Honeymoon Suite. Vocalist Johnnie Dee doesn't seem to have aged at all vocally and the band can still write fine melodies, when they put their heart into it. So, it's decent stuff, but a few real standout songs would have elevated my rating to full four R's. At the moment only "Broken" might make it to my Best Of HMS playlist. As bonustracks, the band has re-recorded two old songs, "Love Changes Everything" and "New Girl Now".  "Love Changes..." is one of my favourite tracks from the band, and it stands head and shoulders above the rest of the material.