by Fernando Ramirez » Sun Oct 23, 2011 5:11 am
I am also a big EUROPE fan... and I LOVED Kee Marcello's work on OUT OF THIS WORLD.
I also like the new direction. There are some killer songs on those three last albums. Some songs on those albums even get pretty close to achieving their old 80s style, to my ears. But by and large.. they are going for a different audience now, and trying to stay relevant instead of doing the old style over and over again. If they only did the old stuff... nobody would buy them now. Well, nobody but the older fans like us. And the truth is EUROPE wants more than a niche market.
In the past, I primarily listened just to 80s metal, but recently... I've had to start listening to rock music from the 90s (which I initially hated), the 2000s, and now. This was because my band wanted to play newer material. I've come to really love some of these newer bands... like Fuel, Alice In Chains, Weezer, and so forth. After getting appreciation for these newer bands, I gained so much respect for Europe's newer direction. They somehow integrated this newer direction with their older style, and it sounds good. Their new albums have great production, great songwriting, and great playing. I've also gained appreciation for John Norum, who I didn't previously like as much as Kee Marcello.
Its true the first few modern albums by them had much LESS keyboards. I like Europe's keyboardist... I think he's fantastic. But the last album LAST LOOK AT EDEN does feature more prominent keys.. you may be happy to find.