The ABC of Trollheart's Albums

[Trollheart]

Yes, another one. This time I'm planning to go through my album collection alphabetically, but pick out a random album/artist from each letter. So for instance, from A I might pick oh let's say Anthrax and then a random album from them. Even if it's an album I know and have reviewed, I'll write a new review. This is not a sustainability thread; all write-ups will be fresh and there will be no recycled material.

Familiarity index (artist)
1 = Never heard of them or heard anything from them
2 = Heard of them but never heard anything by them
3 = Know of them, have heard one or two of their albums or songs
4 = Know them quite well, have heard some of their albums or songs
5 = Know them very well, have heard many of their albums
6 = Know them extremely well, have heard all or most of their albums

Familiarity index (album)

1 = Never heard of it
2 = Heard of it but have never heard it
3 = Heard it maybe once before
4 = Heard it many times
5 = One of my favourite albums


And so we begin, as we should, nay must, at

A


Album title: Echoes in the Garden
Artist: Autumn Silence
Nationality: American (New Jersey)
Genre: Progressive Metal/Power Metal
Year: 2017
Chronology: 1 of 1
Albums owned by me: 1
Albums heard by me to date: 0
Familiarity with artist: 1
Familiarity with album: 1
Background: Oh yeah, that's a power metal/prog rock cover if ever I saw one! Should have a decent idea what to expect from this. Well this is a strange one. This band is dead, having flourished (if you can call it that) from 1987 under two different names, disbanded in 1989, renamed themselves Autumn Silence in 1991 and lasted till 1995. Hardly a meteoric rise to fame now is it? I do find it very odd though that the band, at least under this final name, had just two EPs released, one with 3 tracks and one with 6, and this is apparently a compilation, which has 12! Maybe it includes unreleased material or stuff they wrote or released under either of the other two band names?  Right well it seems I'm right: this includes demo sessions, other versions of tracks and some recorded under the name Midnight Divine (ah, seriously? No wonder they changed their name!), so did the world of music miss out, or was it just as well they folded?
Track by track:

"Winter's Calling": This I would have to say is all right but nothing special, fairly bog-standard power metal with some really iffy production. For some reason it stops near the end and goes into what sounds like some sort of low narration or something? Very hard to make out. Whatever they're trying to do here, I don't think it works.


"Pain Fills My Eyes": A slower, marching, kind of doomier track with hard guitar and an epic sort of keyboard backdrop, the singing is definitely more powerful and passionate, and clear, on this one. A major improvement. I had a pithy comment on standby, I'm sure you can guess, about pain filling my ears, but no, this is pretty damned good. Almost like a different band, to be honest.


"Dreaming": I expected this to be a ballad, and indeed it is, with a nice piano intro and some flutes or whistles or something, and again it helps clean out the bad taste of the opener, which surely was a poor introduction to the band and had me judging them prematurely. Quite anthemic, this. If they had ever got on stage, this would probably have gone down really well. Damn good guitar solo. Exits on the piano line that opened it.


"Ludicrous Speed": I would have been very surprised if this had not been some sort of frenetic, heads-down, pedal-to-the-metal rocker, and indeed I am not surprised, because that's exactly what it is. It does showcase the talents of the guitarist (who apparently did both lead and rhythm) and I have the feeling it may be an instrumental. Yeah it's basically a show-off, look-what-I-can-do piece. Throwaway really.


"So This is Home": Much more sedate, with a blast of what sounds like birdsong, and seems to ride mostly on acoustic guitar, until it doesn't, as the electric fires up, sort of changing the whole shape of the song as the vocalist also gets pretty histrionic. The rapid-fire guitar riffs and the bouncy keyboard run seem at odds with the song, as if the band weren't quite sure what to do with it.


"Le Penseur": I reckon that translates to "the thinker", and it's about the most outwardly prog rock track on the album so far, possibly another instrumental, mostly driven on the keys - ah. I'm wrong. Here come the vocals now. Remains very proggy though, sort of reminds me a little of early Yes perhaps.  It's a good indication of what this band could do when they tried.


"Echoes in the Garden": A lovely church organ style intro with what may be trumpet gives me hope this may be another good track, and to be fair, one or two aside, it's turning out better than I had expected, after the initial shock of the first track. This now kicks up into a galloping, romping keyboard run driven along by rolling percussion, and it's a proper epic, clocking in at a massive sixteen minutes. Of course it goes through many different shifts and changes as it runs, with some really good keyboard runs and guitar solos. It's not often easy to make such long tracks interesting, but I think they manage that here.


"Mirror of Prodigy": A more straightforward power metal rocker, this, and as it's taken from what are called "The Midnight Divine Sessions" I can assume these two songs were recorded under what would have been their second band name (the first was Prophecy) and you can certainly hear the difference. And not in a good way. This is fairly basic, following the tried and tested but surely by now done to death power metal formula. Nothing new here.


"Doubtful Expectations": Is there a message in that title? Recorded in 1989, just prior to their breakup, they must have felt like they were going nowhere. Unfortunately, they were right; even after reforming as Autumn Silence they don't seem to have made a ripple. On the basis of these two tracks, that's not a surprise, as these are really all over the place. Hard and heavy metal riffs, a vocalist who's not sure whether to sing or shriek, and not enough for the keys to do.


"Autumn Silence": Two years later and, presumably, reformed as Autumn Silence, this would I imagine have been their signature tune, had they got that far. This is immediately better, with a big booming drum beat and a sort of Big Country sound to the guitars, pretty epic in scale, well produced, although as I say that, the vocal comes in and it's very hard to hear. Very abrupt ending, like someone just hit the stop key. Hmm.


"A Prayer for the Dying": This is very heavy and aggressive, and again shows me that the band really weren't sure what direction to go in. This doesn't sound like the same people who recorded "Echoes in the Garden" or indeed "Le Penseur". Okay it's another guitar workout.


The last track on this compilation is just a reworking of the title track, and good as that was, I'm not anxious to go through it again so soon, so I'll leave it at that.


Afterword: Sometimes it's hard to see why a band didn't make it. Here, that is not the case. Autumn Silence, or any other name they went by, don't seem to have been able or willing to settle on a sound. Sometimes they wanted to be hard prog metal, sometimes power metal, sometimes introspective prog rock, and a lot more besides. Their style is all over the place, and it would have been hard to know what they were going to do from one track to another. So maybe in the end a lack of direction might have been responsible for their demise. As they say, the rest is silence.

Overall Rating:

Would I listen to more? N/A

[Trollheart]

Moving on to

B

then we have this one:


Album title: Feels Like Comin' Home
Artist: Bonfire
Nationality: German
Genre: Hard rock
Year: 1996
Chronology: 5th of 17 (18th to be released next year)
Albums owned by me: 6
Albums heard by me to date: 2
Familiarity with artist: 4
Familiarity with album: 3
Background: Beginning life as Cacumen (don't ask) Bonfire do at least typify a band of the old school, who played halls, clubs, schools and even in car parks before they got their big break. Like a lot of German melodic/hard rock bands, they espouse very much an American image; Bonfire in particular seem to identify, or want themselves to be identified with the Deep South, as evidenced on their album sleeves and the inclusion of a version of "Dixie"on the next album, Rebel Soul (and even the title of that album). To be honest, first time I heard them I thought they were American, so perhaps mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.
Track-by-track:

"Easy Come, Easy Go": "One! Two! One-two-three!" And we're off with a thumping drumbeat, snarling guitars and a powerful keyboard line, hard rock at its best. Good vocal harmonies which kind of tilt this, for me, more in the direction of AOR than hard rock. It's nothing special, to be fair, but not the worst opener.



"Back to You": A lot better, with a catchy guitar hook right at the start, not a trillion parsecs removed from Guns'n'Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine", more a mid-paced song though. Like the guitar solo.



"Feels Like Comin' Home": The centrepiece of the album, this song represents both Bonfire at their most American and also the fact that this album was their comeback, the band having split and only reformed just before the album was recorded. From the dual piano and acoustic guitar line to the emotional refrain in the chorus, it is, I have to say, a very Bon Jovi song, but they put their own stamp on it. Starts out as a real ballad but then picks up pace in the last moment and goes almost Southern Boogie. Sweet.



"Mama": Lazy laconic slide guitar and tapping percussion takes us into this, a mid-paced rocker charting the rise of a guitar hero. Well, not quite: more like a kid's struggles to gain recognition, while pretending all the while that he's struck it big. Sense of Albert Hammond's "It Never Rains in Southern California" or Bob Seger's "Comin' Home" about this, lyrically anyway.



"I'd Love You to Want Me": I've always loved this ballad ever since I heard Lobo's hit version of it, and Bonfire do a great job on it here. Lovely song.



"Say": Great hook in the chorus on this, a sort of semi-power ballad with some warbling organ and an excellent guitar solo.



"Right Now": Big chiming guitar intro, slowing the tempo down again with a conscious ballad decrying the evils in the world. Good line when he sings "This world is wanted dead or alive" - not sure if he's referencing Bon Jovi there or not.



"Highway of Your Dreams": Bonfire certainly have a knack for writing a catchy tune, and this is another one. Some great guitar work here.



"You Are All": Sounds like another ballad, driven on acoustic guitar, good vocal harmonies.



"Whenever You Cry (I'll Be There)": I'd be surprised if this wasn't a ballad too. I'm surprised. Big grinding guitar and wailing organ in a hard-edged rocker. Whether intentionally or not, they've now namechecked three Bon Jovi songs: "Wanted Dead or Alive" (in "Right Now"), "Never Say Goodbye" (in "You Are All") and now "I'll Be There For You". Interesting.



"Rock 'n' Roll Cowboy": Seriously now? "Candle in the Wind" are the opening lines, and they're in Jon's solo album track "Blaze of Glory", not to mention "The bottle is your only friend" and various other lyrics which definitely nod towards the New Jersey rockers. The song? Yeah it's pretty good, almost a ballad actually. Also sounds rather a lot like Extreme's hit "More Than Words."



"I Don't Want You": Rather than being a bitter song of rejection and recrimination, this is more like 10cc's "I'm Not in Love", and reverses Meat Loaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad", when he sings "I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you". Here, Bonfire sing "I don't want you, I don't need you but I love you anyway." Clever. Lot of vulnerability in this song.



"Can't Wait": One last flurry of guitars before we go, a big powerful intro with the synth growling in the background, building up to a sleazy, strutting rocker very much in the mould of Alannah Myle's "Black Velvet", striding along dangerously.



"Feels Like Comin' Home (Piano version)": Does what it says on the tin. Piano version of the title track.




Afterword: The album showcases soem of the best of Bonfire's songwriting, and their appeal to the American rock market which has resulted in them triumphing against the odds.
Would I listen to more? I have, and I will.

Overall Rating: