Rock Blog #47: Amalgama, Strategy, Roulette, Art Nation, Ginevra

The summer festivals kept me pretty busy for the last couple of months - attending three festivals, writing about them, editing thousands of photos and some videos. Ive tried to keep up with the latest releases but it’s been a ”mission: impossible”, since listening to only new albums all the time isn’t something I want to do. Anyway, here’s a bunch of new and (newish) albums I’ve checked out.

AMALGAMA’s ”Ice Wind Tales” (RRr) is a rather traditional heavy metal album in the vein of 80’s Scorpions and Judas Priest. The band is an international one, with members from several European countries. This is their seventh studio album if I’m not mistaken. The band’s songs aren’t that bad, but not particularly memorable either. There are couple of things that make the band stand out from others though: first, they have a keyboard player who wears a clown mask, a character featured on many of their album covers. Second thing is vocalist Vlad ”Grad” Ivoilov, who sounds very much like Klaus Meine, and even looks a bit like him! 

STRATEGY’s ”Love Tactics” (RRr) starts with some promise, fairly catchy tracks with a sound and artwork straight from West-Germany, 1987. And having seen the video for the title track, apart from vocalist/bassist Weazzel’s way too contemporary beard, they embrace the eighties’ look too. Big hair, frilly shirts, massive stacks of keyboards and Simmons electronic drums in the set! Produtionwise they seem to be faithful to the eighties too, as the vocals do not seem to be pitch-corrected. Mr. Weazzel’s vocals are at times painful to listen to. But anyway, if Kingdom’s ”Lost In The City” is one of your favourite albums, check ”Love Tactics”.

Swedish ROULETTE are back with ”Go!”(RRR), which is their third album. They started way back in the 80’s, but released their first album in 2008, a compilation of their old singles and other material. Encouraged by its’ success, they wrote new music and released the album ”Now!” In 2019 to much critical acclaim.

With a vocalist Thomas Lundgren sounding a lot like Tommy Nilsson, the band has been compared to Easy Action (”That Makes One” era), but I’d say they’re a bit heavier. The album is full of decent AOR songs, but for me, there aren’t any standouts I’m afraid. Recommended for fans of Journey, Alien and FM, give this a listen.

The first ART NATION album owed a lot to H.E.A.T. , but since then the band has moved from that style to something more modern. ”Chapter V- The Ascendance” (RRRR) ends the band’s string of albums with ”-ion” in the title, and sees them taking cues from bands such as Amaranthe, Dynazty and even Kamelot. There are even some techno/industrial vibes on the album, check out ”Unstoppable” for example. Art Nation is vocalist Alexander Strandell’s ”main band”, so it’s only a good thing that it sounds different to the other projects his involved in (Crowne, Nitrate, Lionville).  My favourite songs are ”Set Me Free”, ”Thunderball” and   the aforementioned ”Unstoppable”. 

The Swedish ”supergroup” GINEVRA is a project put together by Frontiers Records, featuring Kristian Fyhr (Seventh Crystal vocalist and a very productive songwriter), Magnus Karlsson (Primal Fear and guitarist/producer/songwriter of many other projects), Jimmy Jay of H.E.A.T. on bass and ex-Eclipse drummer Magnus Ulfstedt.  ”Beyond Tomorrow” (RRRr) is their second effort, with Fyhr co-writing all of the songs with his writing partners  and Karlsson getting a couple of credits too. 

Ginevra’s sound is slightly heavier than the standard Frontiers projects and apparently this album takes a few spins to start working. The opening track ”Moonlight” was an instant ”hit” for me, but now quite a few of these songs have made their presence known - ”True North”, ”Wild Ones” and ”Higher” to name a few. If you like Eclipse, Art Nation, Seventh Crystal and Magnus Karlsson’s projects, this band is worthy of your attention.