GIANT: "Stand And Deliver"

Frontiers 2025
Rating: RRRR
Review by Kimmo Toivonen

 ”Stand And Deliver” is the latest album from GIANT. The rhythm section of David Huff and Mike Brignardello are the only remaining members from the original line-up, while Kent Hill of Perfect Plan continues as the lead vocalist and Jimmy Westerlund (One Desire) has taken over the guitar and production duties.  Westerlund and Hilli have written most of the songs, with a little help from Frontiers’ ”songwriter pool”. A few of the tunes have been sourced from elsewhere, including original guitarist/singer Dann Huff’s archives. 

I must say that the writers (and the producer) have really made sure that these songs sound like Giant. Some of the song titles are underlining the connection to the old stuff kind of heavily - there’s ”Hold The Night” (”Hold Back The Night”), ”It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” (”I’ll Be There When It’s Over” and ”It’s Not Over” from the previous album) and Paradise Found (”Lost In Paradise”) , but I can live with that, because the songs are so good. 

The album starts with a very impressive string of great songs: ”It’s Not Right”, ”A Night To Remember”, ”Hold  The Night” and ”I Will Believe” ( a Clif Magness/Kyle Vincent composition). Big hooks, impressive production and great vocals from Kent Hill, what’s not to like? 

Next up, ”Beggars Can’t Be Choosers” sounds like a typical uptempo Giant rocker (think ”Time To Burn” or ”The Big Pitch”), not necessarily a filler as it has its’ place here, but not one of my favourites. ”It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” is a good ballad, while ”Stand And Deliver” is a close relative to ”Lay It On The Line”, maybe its’ illegitimate offspring. 

Then we get to the Dann Huff songs. ”Time To Call It Love” is written by Huff and the late Mark Spiro, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s a fine, melodic song. ”Holdin’ On For Dear Life” and ”Paradise Found” are both co-written by Van Stephenson, another master songwriter who has passed away a few years ago. The first of them is an okay rocker, while ”Paradise Found” is a fine ballad. As it happens, Van Stephenson co-write the above mentioned ”Lost In Paradise”, so maybe this is an official sequel? 

The last song is ”Pleasure Dome”, and I assume that a ”Thunder And Lightning” type of a mid-tempo rocker has been the target. Sure enough, Del Vecchio, Westerlund and Hilli wrote something similar, but this is more like ”dark clouds and occasional showers”.

As long as this project has the blessing of Dann Huff, I won’t join the choir that sings ”this shouldn’t be called Giant!” Of course I’d be thrilled if Dann decided to participate, but as things are, this Giant will have to do, and I enjoy these songs almost as much as the ”originals”. 

Rock Blog #45: Ghost, H.E.A.T. , Harem Scarem, Enbound

Back to our nornal programming - reviews and that sort of things!

GHOST released their latest album a while ago, and it went to #1 on the Billboard charts! Congrats, who says Rock is dead? As for the album ”Skeletá” (RRRRr), I like it a lot. Their theatrical brand of melodic rock with sounds strangely seventies and modern at the same time. 

I find it hard to name highlights because I pretty much like every song on the album, but maybe ”Missilia Amori”, ”Umbra”, ”Guiding Lights”… the only song that doesn’t really move me is the closing ballad ”Excelsis”. 

The new H.E.A.T. album has been in heavy rotation on my playlist, and I think it’s an improvement from the previous one. ”Welcome To The Future” (RRRRr) isn’t their best album, but one of the better ones for sure. 

For me, it’s an album of two halves, even though I don’t have it on vlnyl. The first half is the better one, with ”Running To You” which I rate as one of the best songs of this year and 5 other rather fine songs. On the ”B-side” there’s room for material that’s not quite as strong. I like ”Children Of The Storm”, ”Paradise Lost” and ”We Will Not Forget”, but the other three aren’t in the same league. Not bad songs by any means, but not as good as the others. 

HAREM SCAREM is back and they’re ”Chasing Euphoria” (RRRR). After the first spin of the album I thought the brilliant title track overshadowed the other tracks, but now that I’ve played this a few more times, the other songs are raising their heads. 

The very ”Mood Swings”-like ”Gotta Keep Your Head Up” sung by Darren Smith and ”Slow Burn” would probably be the next contenders for a Best of Harem Scarem mixtape, but considering the band’s back catalogue, I’m not sure whether they’d make it. The title track would though.

I recall liking the previous two ENBOUND albums, which featured ”Lee Hunter” aka Lars Säfsund on vocals. He’s now replaced by another good Swedish singer, Toby from Arctic Rain. Lee Hunter does make an appearance on the song ”Actors”. 

”Set It Free” (RRR) is a well-produced, highly polished melodic metal album, but somehow it leaves me a bit cold. I’ve tried listening to it on different days and situations, but it doesn’t open for me. I don’t know why,  the melodies just don’t lure me into their world. It can’t be the change of vocalist, because the new guy sings very well too.

Rock Blog #44: a small CD hunter’s travel guide to Vienna

This blog entry is something different. I’ll get back to the normal stuff later, but for now, here’s  a small ”CD hunter’s travel guide to Vienna”. 

Me and my family spent a few days in the beautiful city of Vienna in Austria recently, and I did some CD hunting there. Beforehand, I checked out what the city had to offer, and chose a couple of the many second hand records stores which I wanted to visit, as I only had limited time for this hobby of mine.

The weather wasn’t favorable on our first day in Vienna, but I decided to take a walk in the rain to Moses Records and Sing Sing Records anyway, a little bit outside the main shopping district. These days it’s fairly easy to navigate with a phone in your hand, but I did take a few wrong turns which made the trip a slightly longer than I had hoped for. First stop was at Moses Records, which was packed with vinyl and CDs. They had dedicated shelves for metal and other genres, but also a million 2 euro CD’s in no particular order. I checked out most of the CD racks, but didn’t find anything I absolutely wanted. The prices of the used CDs were around 6-15 euros I think, those 2 euro cheap ones excluded. 

The next stop was at SingSing Records, which was maybe a slightly smaller store, but more to my liking. A decent hard rock / metal selection, and I picked up a couple of CDs, a Petra compilation and Michael Bormann’s first solo album, 6 euros each. I tried to bargain as they weren’t in that good condition, but the lady behind the counter showed no mercy :). She was helpful though, when I asked where I should go for new CDs.  SingSing had also a lot of boxes full of 1 euro CDs. As far as I could tell, they weren’t sorted out in any way, and seemed to be mostly common pop/rock stuff. Maybe I could have found something if I had gone through them all, but the amount of boxes was exhausting! 

The Müller store on the Mariahilfer strasse had a ”vinyl fair” going on, where you got a discount depending on how many LP’s you bought. Not really my thing, LP’s are fairly expensive these days. They also had a small, fairly decent CD department.  I also visited a Media Markt on the same street, their selection wasn’t as good. These big department and electronic stores seem to be cutting down the space dedicated for music, which is sad but understandable. The kids nowadays are enjoying their music via streaming services. Still, compared to Finnish stores, it was a time trip to 5-10 years ago. The CD shelves have pretty much disappeared from major stores. 

I did some shopping at Westfield Shopping City Süd, which is a huge shopping mall outside of Vienna. There was a Müller store there, and I found the latest Avantasia album on vinyl for 25 euros, which I thought was a good price. I also bought the new H.E.A.T. CD, 15 euros. The was a small Media Markt in the mall too, nothing much there. A massive store of theirs would have been in the same area, but I didn’t have the time to wander there. Oh what did I miss… 

Another chain that carries some CDs is Thalia. They’re mostly a book store but they do have some music and movies, at least in some of their branches.