Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
When an album can grab the listener’s attention at four in the morning, when the dust of the day has settled upon layer upon layer and yet with gratifying force can shake it off like a volcano shedding years of pressure in one gigantic explosion and the sleep that you thought needed is replaced by the urge to rage, pound and live.
For Joel Hoekstra’s 13, the new and enticing album, Dying To Live, is one that grafts with the unrelenting craft of a master in his prime and the thump of weighted expectancy, of the moment when the human volcano releases each song into the air and allows the flames and guitar lava to engulf the pretentious and lead the flock away from the signs of mediocre and the beige.
It is the most pleasing of album titles that harbours the true worth of existence, that life should be grasped and used, held aloft as a prize worth seizing and experienced for all that is worth; it is a prize that many forget they have within their hands until it’s far too late to do anything but regret and dream of lament.
It is an album title that isn’t shackled by songs that have no thought of holding their own to the expected toil; instead Dying To Live is rammed to the breaking point of delighted exhaustion that praises the affluent musicianship set out by Joel Hoekstra, Jeff Scott Soto, Russell Allen, Tony Franklin, Vinny Appice and Derek Sherinian. Tracks such as Until I Left You, the peace destructing Scream, Changes and the all guns firing finale of What We Believe all congregate around the ethos of the album, the musical philosophy of living for each and every breathe available to you, to take life by the horns and allow the music to flow with outrageous abandon until the speakers cry out to rest.
A superb album of restless discretion, an institution of melodic rock, Dying To Live is Joel Hoekstra’s masterpiece.
Joel Hoekstra’s 13, Dying To Live is released on October 16th.
Ian D. Hall