Label: Mascot Records/Border 2012
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom
Glenn Hughes aka The Voice of Rock? He's got one of those voices you either love or hate? Or at least that's what people keep telling me? I never quite understood their point of view(s) and especially not the haters? Anyone with a tiny bit of sense would surely appreciate the vibrato and close to perfect (soul) phrasing of absolutely everything he's ever done. Then again, not that strange all considering that some folks do not even appreciate female vocalists in metal or elsewhere for that matter... and they surely must be completely bonkers.
Not always blessed with excellent material though and the former singer of Deep Purple, Trapeze, Gary Moore, Black Sabbath, Hughes/Thrall, Phenomena, etc. hardly my all-time favorite crooner. However, the "Afterglow" performance must go down as one of the best happenings of the year? Sheer and utter top notch quality from the opening words of "Big Train" to the closing dito of "Crawl". The third Black Country Communion album has been rumored to cause the verbal outburst (to say the least) between Hughes and guitarist Joe Bonamassa and you can almost feel the tension within the compositions. They huff, puff, howl, rip, and shred at each other and thus why they also ended up with the best BCC album so far?
I've been told that Hughes wrote the majority of tunes and it's clearly a different formula than previous attempts at world domination. It's ever so slightly more towards Deep Purple, Hughes/Thrall, and overall, definitely more of Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater). Perhaps not quite as much "metal" but just as much of the blues and Zeppelin vibes as usual and Bonamassa rides hard on wah-wah's and Page-like licks. I find it hard to pick favorite tracks as this is very much the band album effort like in the good old days? Crises what crisis? They've never sounded more alive and on their toes. Highly recommended.
www.bccommunion.com
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