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.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In music there is no such thing as a fluke, there is no such thing as a happy co-incidence and despite the many one hit wonders that have littered and worried for a short while both the album and single charts around the world, it still takes skill, dedication and talent to have got even that far let alone become good enough to be recorded live as from Songs From The Road.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If you’re going to go big, if you aim to go bigger than the Vienna Opera House then there really are only two places you can go. Either you spend a week putting the glitz and glamour into perspective at the Royal Albert Hall or you take on the history associated with New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Everything else in between is straddled between beautiful venue after interesting city or going all out and serenading 200,000 people at Rock In Rio; Radio City Hall is as big as it gets without going over the top.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Many people have an opinion on Geoff Tate, the siren with a voice of silk former lead vocalist of Queensryche, some wandering through the lands of the idyllic and the muse, some disdainful of his achievements, especially away from the band that he was such a big part of for virtually all his adult life and certainly in the album Frequency Unknown for which there appeared two Queensryche’s upon the glistening sands of Progressive Metal.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Without the feeling of adoration, the heaviness of fondness and the tenderness that comes when love rears its nostalgic head and winks with the satisfaction of a school girl crush that turns into a long lasting marriage, life is not worth a jot. It has no meaning and even if it is just once, a pure and magical once that the stomach feels the tight knot of weakness at never wanting to see someone else cry, then it proves beyond measure that Love is worth every spent tear.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It is the gift that keeps on giving, the tight control of the Scandinavian fist on the world of Metal, a fist that hammers home with vigour and force, the intelligent and the now customary. A fist that when opened holds a flower of acceptance into a world of Nordic style myths and legends that are ripe for the adaption of music and the sense of passion that Metal, when performed well and with undulating, heaving heart, more than captures the listener’s attention, it holds it for ransom and smiles with a soft caress.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Progressive Rock never truly went away, it might have lost its bearing for a while, it might have been mugged and left battered and bruised, bereft of its credentials by the doubters, haters and the advent of Punk in all its glorious shades giving it perhaps a giant kicking when the beast had lumbered on long past its first revolution. Progressive Rock never went away, despite it all and since 2000 has really been in a rich vein of form that has seen it out last time wise past both its original incarnation and the short but glimmering second coming spearheaded by the likes of Marillion.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
You can’t beat a good old fashioned Rock record, it has the power to turn around a day in your favour, it has the ability to shine its magnificent torch into areas of conscious that often go unexplored and it breathes for the chance to take the soul on a journey of discovery. Above all, if the lyrics strike home with perfect clarity, it has the capacity within each layered song to shake the foundations of the house to the point where the neighbours either complain or bang on the door, carrying a keg of beer and wanting to join in the party.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Ian Prowse has set aside drawing on his own prolific output to introduce the listener to some of the songwriters he has encountered over the years. “Troubadours”, as he describes them, whose songs have been “lost, trodden down in the mud, or were kicked sideways into the ditch by an unforgiving music industry.” It’s a magnanimous gesture and one that will reward all concerned in the album Compañeros.
Ian Prowse credits Kevin Jamieson (Town and Country Blues) for inspiring him to imbue his music with the Celtic Soul that had “entered his being like a musical Toronto Blessing.” It’s a Latinate/country romp during which Ian Prowse seems to have discovered a new vocal style, almost a growl.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Miami is not only a place, it is an institution. A city in which British travellers minds may turn to when thinking of the one place on America’s Eastern continental edge to which the history (New York, Philadelphia, Boston), the gambling and sense of old style profiteering (New Jersey) and the consequence of squabbles, in fighting and racial tension, (anywhere that verges and bleeds into North V South) play almost no part; Miami is the Mediterranean of the North Americas, it is the place to go when everything else has been done and what should be next is the rest and relaxation, the apparent fun and the soulful looking for meaning in later life. Miami is not a place; it is a state of mind.