Album review: EDGE OF FOREVER – Days Of Future Past (Remasters, 3 CD set)

Frontiers [Release date: 11.02.22]

Frontiers’ golden boy, Alessandro Del Vecchio, formed Edge Of Forever in 2004.

The label has now released the band’s back catalogue in a 3 CD, remastered set, titled Days Of Future Past, with a bonus track added to each.

The debut, Feeding The Fire (2004), was produced by Marcel (Talisman) Jacob, which was something of a coup for an unknown band. As was getting Axe vocalist Bob Harris on board.

The songs are standard stuff. Hard edged melodic rock, straying into Deep Purple, Rainbow territory from time to time.

Harris is a class act. He makes a difference. The fact that ‘Feeding The Fire’ and ‘Gates Of Hell’ are the album’s high watermarks is largely down to Harris’s ability to turn an ordinary lyric into something meaningful.

Perhaps even moreso, that notion applies also to ballad, ‘The Road We Walked On’. Harris wrings maximum effect out of a familiar sentiment, while Jacob dresses it in guitar and piano finery. Both doing what they do best. ***

The band found another gear on Let The Demon Rock’n'Roll, the follow up album, released a year later.

Axe’s Bobby Barth took over production duties. Any metal vestiges have been expunged and the focus is well and truly on Melodic (hard) Rock and AOR.

Bob Harris is again on vocals, his voice swoops and soars through ‘The Machine’, and ‘Feel Like Burning’, pulled along by a funky undertow. The band were truly hitting their stride now.

‘One Last Surrender’, ‘In My Eyes’ and a fabulous ballad, ‘Deep Emotion’ are glorious slices of AOR, magnifying the qualities – urgency, a sense of anticipation – enjoyed by the best stuff that came out of the eighties. ***1/2

Four years later, Del Vecchio put together a new band with the Edge Of Forever name. They recorded and released Another Paradise in 2009.

In a bold, confident move, Del Vecchio wrote all the songs and handled all the lead vocals.

If it wasn’t for a couple of misfires here, you could have argued this was the best of the 3.

It was a shrewd move by Del Vecchio to bring in Carsten Schultz and Bob Harris to duet with him on ‘Edge Of Life’ and ‘What I’ve Never Seen’… the album standouts by a considerable distance.

Coming close behind, ‘Distant Voices’ and ‘Against The Wall’ saw the band resurrect their melodic metal tendencies, indicating the direction of follow up album to come, Seminole, in 2022. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 28 October 2024

THE RASMUS Rest In Pieces (Better Noise Music)
THE PLAGUE What Else Can I Do (FiXT)
STAR CIRCUS Turn The Tide (indie)
DEFENCES Breathe It In (Long Branch Records)

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09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)