Revolution Saints CD review

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Revolution Saints CD review

Postby TageRyche » Fri Apr 10, 2015 9:53 pm

Revolution Saints

S/T

Frontier Records -2015

http://www.revolutionsaints.com

When the press release came out to announce the formation of a new "super-group" featuring Night Ranger's Jack Blades, former Whitesnake guitarist Doug Aldrich and Journey drummer Deen Castronovo, I couldn't help but feel pretty excited at the prospect of what their collaboration might turn out to be. Each musician has a solid pedigree with the acts with which they are most associated. While still playing drums, it is actually Castronovo performing the majority of the vocals on the album. Jack Blades has a vocal turn on "You're Not Alone" (sharing leads with Journey's Arnel Pineda) and "Way To The Sun" (with Alessandro Del Vecchio).

And musically speaking, this album turned out quite well. But the album also inspired what can only be termed a two part review for me.

The album opens up strong with two fast paced numbers. "Back on My Trail" (see the video below) is a full-on rocker to get your synapses firing right from the get-go. And while I initially didn't care much for "Turn Back Time" when I first saw the video online before the album's release, the song did grow on me over repeated listens. The production may overshadow the chorus a bit but the song ends up being quite enjoyable.

Some of the online commentary has mentioned how the band tends to sound a bit like Journey. I think that opinion is a somewhat overstated, but I definitely heard that band's influence on the tracks "Don't Walk Away" and "Dream On". While the latter cut is a high quality rocker, the former is a power ballad that ends up being pretty much a formless mess.

The main portion of the album features 12 tracks, with four of the songs as ballads, which seems a bit much in my book. The fact that three of those songs (the aforementioned "Don't Walk Away", "You're Not Alone" and "Way Back To The Sun") are of pedestrian quality at best doesn't help matters any. "You're Not Alone" features Journey's Arnel Pineda on co-lead vocals. The only ballad I found enjoyable was the closing track "In The Name of the Father (Fernando's Song)". The song also features a nice guitar solo.

Speaking of the guitar work, it had some real nice moments in the spotlight as one might imagine. I loved the solo on "Here Forever" and "Better World." While I didn't care for "Way Back To The Sun," the track did feature Journey's Neal Schon on guitar.

The band really shined on the rockers "To Mend a Broken Heart" and my personal favorite track "Locked Out of Paradise."

The album is a rock solid example of stand out melodic rock. The performances are top notch and you can definitely see the potential the band could have as a continuous entity. You've got a solid rhythmic foundation upon which to build the soaring vocals and choruses and Doug Aldrich's playing is pretty much amazing.

That said, you might wonder why I'm kind of disappointed in the album and the "band" as a whole.

The smallest portion of disappointment goes to the fact that the band included three hidden bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of the disc. There's no mention of the songs anywhere in the liner notes. I had to look the information up online. Actually, they aren't so much bonus tracks as they are alternate versions of songs already on the album. There's two extra versions of "You're Not Alone". The first alternate features Arnel Pineda as the solo vocalist while the second alternate has Castronovo on vocals. Meanwhile, the third "bonus" track is another version of "Way To The Sun" that features Doug Aldrich playing the guitar instead of the Neal Schon guest appearance. All of this is meaningless drivel to me, there's no need for three extra tracks that don't actually add anything to the overall package.

But that is such a minor thing compared to the fact that this project essentially makes all three players in the band little more than a cover band. With the exception of a Jack Blades lyric credit for the song "Turn Back Time", none of them had anything to do with the creation of the music on the album. This has been a running theme with a lot of releases from Frontier Records in the past but the trend has been getting stronger in recent years. It is almost like they are turning melodic rock into rock and roll's answer to how things generally work with country music. That is to say, the material performers sing and play being composed by others.

In this case, the majority of the album was written by Alessandro Del Vecchio. To be perfectly honest, calling this a Revolution Saints album must violate some truth in advertising laws somewhere. It should've been a solo release for Del Vecchio instead. He produced the album, played keyboards, did vocal work and either wrote or co-wrote 11 of the 12 songs on the disc.

It isn't like the majority of the songs aren't of excellent quality. Perhaps it is a bias of mine, but when it comes to rock music, I want the people performing it to have "ownership" of the material. I think if they don't create or at the very least co-create (and one tiny lyrical credit does not fit the bill) the material they perform, they might just as well be an official cover band instead of a widely publicized rock group.

In the end, my review is a bit of a split personality. If all you care about is the music, I think you will definitely enjoy this album. Regardless of who wrote the songs, they are mostly fantastic. Yes I hated the ballads, but I'm a bit of an unsympathetic son of a gun, so perhaps other listeners will rejoice in the band's slower material. And the band can really rock out when the occasion is called for.

But for those who also pay attention to the behind the scenes crafting of an album, there will be that school of thought that you aren't quite getting an honest representation of the three main credited members of this band.
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