Frontiers [release date: 11.11.22]
It’s a pleasure to welcome a band from the Asian continent, About Us, to the world of AOR and Melodic Rock (despite the album’s Proggy cover).
They are a well established, award winning band in their native country of India, and although most of the band’s members have been in the music biz for over a decade, About Us have only been together for 3 years. And only just signed on with Frontiers.
We can hear what the label heard. At least, we can for the first 5 tracks.
The album immediately strikes a rich vein of eighties’ melodic rock with opener, ‘Right Now’, probably the best AOR song that Blue Tears and/ or Unruly Child never wrote. Then peaking a couple of tracks later with the stomping stadium rock of ‘Lead My Heart’.
Between times, switching influences to a different continent, they give us the fluffier, Scandi flavoured ‘Gimme Gimme’ and the exhilarating, harder edged ‘Our Fairyland’, a song that would give Wigelius and Eclipse a run for their money. We’re on a roll now.
They close out the first half of the album with ‘Loaded Love’s twanging guitars and drawled sentiments, catching the mood of Danger Danger Country Rock spinoff band, Dark Horse.
The second half of the album stumbles hesitantly through a land of rushing, stuttering rhythms, Bon Jovi soundalikes, and heavy metal screams. Like they ran out of finished material and substituted these uninspired jam sessions instead.
It’s a real let down, and a disappointing finish to an album that showed so much inititial promise. **1/2
Review by Brian McGowan
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Power Plays w/c 15 April 2024
ENMY The Ledge (FiXT)
KAROBELA Get Hard (indie)
KATH & THE KICKS Neptune (indie)
THE BEE TELLERS River Poem (Black Sand Records)
LAUREN FREEBIRD Like A Bomb (indie)
Featured Albums w/c 15 April 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023
14:00-16:00 KATARINA PEJAK – Pearls On A String (Ruf Records)
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