Album review: VEGA – Battlelines
Frontiers Records [Release Date 08.09.23]
First of all an apology – Vega’s seventh album was released in Autumn 2023 but dropped under my reviewing radar at the time!
It is the first since the departure of the Martin Brothers who had been band members and co-song writers since the very beginning leading some to fear for the band’s future. However the other songwriting mainstay, singer Nick Workman is still very much there, and indeed there is no drastic change of style. Instead it continues along the line of slightly harder hitting and guitar heavy yet still melodic approach of previous albums ‘Grit Your Teeth’ and ‘Anarchy and Unity’. Drummer Pete Newdeck has co-written and also oversees a very bright-sounding production.
Beginning with a Billy Duffy-like riff, ‘Heroes And Zeroes’ is an impressive anthemic opener with a fast fingered solo from Marcus Thurston but is upstaged by ‘Killers’, an instant Vega classic with massive hooks and Nick sounding as good as ever on the vocals as his vocals soar.
‘Battlelines’ is another anthem with some modern sounding keys but also some harmony twin guitar from Marcus and Billy Taylor. ‘Love to Hate You’ starts off relatively mundane until a quite outstanding chorus, bouncy and filled with multiple hooks.
Unfortunately the rest of the album does not quite live up to such a strong start, starting with ‘Don’t Let Them See You Bleed’ with more modern keys and Nick again singing in a higher register, and ‘Embrace T
he Grey’ with the modern pop/rock feel of earlier Vega on albums like ‘Who We Are’.
‘33s and 45s’, a homage to physical musical product, rings out anthemically like an AOR version of U2 and is a real grower- as is ‘Not Enough’ but ‘Into The Fire’ has a slower tempo and sounds like Bon Jovi – unfortunately the drearier version of more recent vintage.
‘Run With Me’ is another typical modern rock song enlivened by a rapid fire guitar solo, while ‘God Save The King’- neither a pro- or anti-monarchy sentiment as you might expect but a diatribe against an entitled (unnamed) individual- has a punkier feel and ‘Gotta Be You’ ends the album on a high, the prominent keyboard hook accompanied by heavier guitar.
Sadly, owing to a dreadful family tragedy that befell a band member, the tour to support the album had to be suddenly curtailed. When the band are ready to tour again this slightly uneven album still provides plenty of anthems to add to their already large armoury of them. ****
Review by Andy Nathan
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