Artist: WildKard
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2007
Holy moly! WildKard! Unbelievable! What kind of rock oddity is this now? Three members of the long-defunct AOR rockers Kick, who raised hell in the eighties. Textbook representatives of the British school! “Megalomania” is a record built from material that was written fifteen years ago, back in the early nineties, as part of The Zero Hour Project. It was never finished or released.
Finally the time has come for the old tomcats of Kick, namely Nick Workman (vocals), Chris Jones (vocals) and Mikey J. (bass), to get together in the studio and wipe off the thick layer of dust that settled on the tapes over the long years of waiting to be properly born. This time they decided to go by the name WildKard. For backup they called in some trained, obedient Scandinavian talent (keyboards, drums), tracked down in Finland, where the old material was recorded anew, polished to the last detail and built up. On top of that, the guest list includes Steve Newman. Newman’s influence is definitely felt in the final shape of “Megalomania”, so this album is sure to be interesting for fans of Newman albums too.
Kick delivered terrific production, which in the eighties, with its sheer polish, pushed hard into the front rank of the genre’s quality elite of those days! Why this material didn’t come out in the nineties, only the devil knows, but maybe the guys realized that the time of other musical trends had already run them over, and that all the last carriages for the classic eighties AOR sound had irrevocably left the station, leaving them with nothing but a fond memory, which luckily hasn’t faded. If that’s really what they thought, they weren’t wrong. A record released in the nineties would have been outright commercial suicide.
In the “mature” years, when maybe you don’t care so much about money anymore (or do you?) and you sober up, go through a catharsis of personal purification, give up drugs and booze (God forbid you’d also throw in “babes” and rock’n’roll by accident, because then you’re toast), aware of how many virtues your music carries that you never managed to release, it’s definitely a reward for all the loyal fans of the classic AOR sound. Commercial suicide is not in question, because the point of the release isn’t profit (otherwise it would definitely be suicide). It’s simply the satisfaction of seeing something that deserves it properly documented. “Megalomania” is a true lost gem, one that young musicians can learn from in their search for studio-sound perfection and the art of combining musical arrangements.
Eighties production? Is it even worth wasting words? The British approach? Clear dividing lines between the front line (guitar and keyboards) and the rhythm section (bass, drums). A highly melodic, center-placed vocal, authoritative in every single passage, masterfully dressed in vocal harmonies that add a touch of drama and help build soaring moods. The communication between the instruments and the vocals is exceptional in the soundscape, and “Megalomania” is an example of an album with the spectral picture of sound used and filled to the max. The touch of melancholy is strong, since this creation comes out of British heads. And that’s not all. The album rides a wave of ultra-dynamic freshness in the riffs themselves, which all go on to build compact, recognizable songs with a high degree of variety between them. The album is represented by a bravura combination of hot, flammable AOR pulsers Letting Go, Something Strange, the opening Falling Down (!!!), All I Have and End Of The World, which are real AOR anthems that every fan of the genre will fall irreversibly in love with in an instant. Standing out among them are the superb 7Days, the closing Right Here By My Side (with venomously Leppard-esque vocal choruses in the refrain) and Something Strange. The mastery of the players behind “Megalomania” is confirmed by the ballad-leaning but always concretely rock-riff-tipped Whispers In The Dark, Wake Me Up When It’s Over and When Everything Has Changed, which make no secret of their predatory, erotic embrace. Staying unsugared and yearning is a big challenge, but the Brits have clearly always managed to meet it without breaking a sweat. WildKard are definitely at home here too! An album that doesn’t buckle for a single lonely second, an album with quality consistency across its entire length.
WildKard are close to Kick, with a sound putting more emphasis on keyboards, so the sound is different anyway and isn’t Kick. And actually it is Kick. A mature Kick in the new millennium, making a most convincing case that classic AOR gems are still hiding out there, ones that time couldn’t wipe away and that can, even today, travel completely unexpectedly from the past into the present, where they manage to liven up the stale, hopeless unimaginativeness of modern-day hard rock! Watch out! AOR hasn’t said its last word yet!
Line-up
Nick Workman – vocals
Chris Jones – guitar
Mikey J. – bass
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Steve Newman – keyboards
Olli Cunningham – keyboards
Jonne Valtonen – keyboards
Jaakko Niitemaa – guitar
Jimbo Mäkeläinen – drums
Production
Chris Jones & Mikey J
Track list
1. Falling Down
2. All I Have
3. End Of The World
4. 7 Days
5. Whispers In The Dark
6. Wake Me Up When It’s Over
7. Something Strange
8. When Everything Has Changed
9. Letting Go
10. Right Here By My Side
Running time: 43.40
