Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Pink Cream 69
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2013
Length: 51:27
Rating: 4.7/5
Almost 6 years have passed since »In10sity« and Pink Cream 69 are finally back! Does anyone still remember their show in Veliko Ubeljsko back in the mists of time, on 14.07.2007? RockLine did an interview with the band that day, and the footage even made it onto the later double DVD »Past & Present« … fond memories of a great band, and the main thing is that they’re still Pink Cream 69. Great, of course.
Why it took so long to cook up a new album, only the devil knows. Singer David Readman has been busy with his solo career and lent his vocals to Voodoo Circle – the project of German guitar virtuoso Alex Beyrodt. Kosta Zafiriou, now a former drummer and otherwise a founding member of the band, has been tied up with management work for Helloween, and recently the band’s sticksman jumped ship to Unisonic – »Ceremonial« is in fact the first album for the new member, drummer Chris Schmidt. Then there’s the question of how Alfred Koffler’s health has been in the meantime. The guitarist has suffered since 2004 from a form of focal dystonia (a nervous system disorder in which the muscles in one part of the body stop obeying the commands of the brain’s association cortex) in his left hand. That Pink Cream 69 still kick ass, we saw for ourselves the year before last, when we caught the band in Kaufbeuren, Germany (ahead of Helloween and Stratovarius). »Ceremonial« is therefore a kind of homecoming for the current Pink Cream 69 lineup. When you first glance at the tracklist of »Ceremonial«, you can’t help feeling you’re holding a covers album, with titles like Land Of Confusion, Wasted Years, I Came to Rock… and the album title itself might hint at it too.
Even with the latest album, Pink Cream 69 remain the version of hard rock that sits closest to heavy metal in the concise sound of its guitar riffs. With this new record, Pink Cream 69 stay in the league of old-school hard rock outfits from the German-speaking corner of Europe, starting with Krokus, Bonfire, Frontline, Max, Fair Warning and the newer Jaded Heart, and you can add Denmark’s Pretty Maids to that list too. Pink Cream 69 are still damn well wound up in their guitar riffs in this new era. Typical German devotion, you could say! They also stay true to the melodic ferocity of possessive chorus hooks, which sit front and center in the song arrangements. The unyielding rock slap-in-the-face Right From Wrong is, in that respect, the ideal candidate among the new album’s tracks for a single. A tight, short »shrapnel«, spiked with riffs and a bombastic chorus, a manifesto for Pink Cream 69 in the new era. Wasted Years, with the opening part of its chorus smelling of the Queen evergreen Breakthru, is another handy pick for the album’s lead single. The atmospheric crescendo, of course, once again lands in the chorus.
The old school of Rainbow-style hard rock shows its bristling edge right away on the opener Land Of Confusion, where the graduated build-up of mood in the glow of an Arabic-flavored melody recalls some distant family ties with Rainbow’s mini epic suite Gates Of Babylon. A dark opening stretch for the album, in tune with dark European times. There are quite a few guitar phrases on the album that carry a primordial bond with the classic hard rock school, and it feels incredibly good, because albums played with this much passionate intensity from the classic hard rock school are getting rarer and rarer. The lead guitar phrase in Big Machine owes a debt of thanks to the main opening riff of the Whitesnake classic Still Of The Night. Of course, the album’s basic stance is the recognizable Pink Cream 69 trademark sound, but the sharply cut riffs that nod at the forefathers of their creative inspiration, such as Deep Purple (I Came to Rock sports a bit of the Speed King hairdo in the verse), are teasingly tempting and stoke the album’s progress just right, keeping the die-hard fan of hard-sounding yet melodically crafted music glued to it.
In almost six years between the new album and the previous one, a lot of ideas piled up. And of course the best ones were used. That’s why the album unfolds in the glow of a powerful, dynamic wave of shifting moods. The red thread running through the record is forged by a strong chemical bond of white-hot live playing, which creates a proper concert feel. Typical, yes, but essentially typical for the credibility of the German hard rock school! One such highlight of the album is the mid-tempo, dark and highly atmospheric Passage Of Time, where Readman is especially commanding in his exceptional vocal stance, since switching between the fast and calm passages of the song gives him extra room to graft a soul hairdo onto the melody of the verses. And of course the fully capitalized bombast of the chorus hook doesn’t go unnoticed. Readman gets close to that again in King For One Day toward the end of the album, and in the calm passages of the opening Land Of Confusion. These mid-tempo moments underline the album’s outstanding vocal substance, as Readman is at his strongest and most intense in them, which gives him extra space to stretch out to the max and so draw the sensitive side of the lyrics in the verses even more vividly. David Readman’s vocal performance remains a chapter of perfection in its own right with Pink Cream 69. On this album too, then!
A note of lucidity on the album is surely provided by the bluesy but riff-spiked closer Superman, combined with its fun verses. Here Pink Cream 69 once again show how to build a bombastic character in the hairdo of melodic hard rock catchiness. One more supremely commanding chorus hook will take you there, and remind you at the same time that Pink Cream 69 have carved out another excellent studio album, one you’ll want to slide back into the CD player the moment it ends.
And the difference from »In10sity«? There’s really only one, but it’s important enough. »Ceremonial« comes across as retro-sounding overall. So it’s closer to the school of the classic rock bands cited in the earlier paragraphs of this review. That’s why the riffs feel a little looser, which in turn frees up space for the rhythm section to come through in sharper contrast, and that also highlights the sensual core of David Readman’s vocal interpretation. So »Ceremonial« is a touch less venomously bristling than its vampirically metal-charged predecessor »In10sity«. For that reason the new album is additionally juicy and condensed in its sound picture, which means it follows the tracks of the old rock school’s model of playing and orchestral sound squeezed into a classic rock quintet, even though Pink Cream 69 don’t use keyboards, so smaller contrasting shifts in sound and style production are harder to pick up than with other bands of the European hard rock school.
A ripe, juicy pear of top-notch hard rock, served up by the thoroughly trustworthy artistic conglomerate that is Pink Cream 69! Since Denmark’s Pretty Maids are releasing a new studio album in two months, it would be worth considering sending both bands out on a joint European tour.
Lineup
David Readman – vocals
Alfred Koffler – guitar
Uwe Reitenauer – guitar
Dennis Ward – bass
Chris Schmidt – drums
Production
Dennis Ward
Tracklist
1. Land of Confusion
2. Wasted Years
3. Special
4. Find Your Soul
5. The Tide; Big Machine
6. Let the Thunder Roll
7. Right or Wrong
8. Passage of Time
9. I Came to Rock
10. King for One Day
11. Superman
