Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: 20.09.2019
Producers: Michael Schenker & Michael Voss Schön
Album length: 53.41 min
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 9.0 / 10
Michael Schenker is an iconic guitarist, and he also holds the scepter as a guitar figure of historic stature in hard rock pioneering. With his long-lived presence on the music scene, his unique style and approach, and the sheer breadth of his musical outlook, he contributed essential ingredients to cementing and developing hard rock and heavy metal. Especially by crossing blues rhetoric with neoclassicism, much like Richie Blackmore, and by building a dialogue of that rhetoric inside the mission called rock ‘n’roll. The legendary musician is enjoying a real renaissance in his later years. First confirmed by the album »Resurrection«, which came out two years ago under the Michael Schenker Fest banner. For his newly found »fest«, Schenker gathered under one roof the vocalists who sang on his essential MSG albums (McAuley, Barden, Bonnet) and on his »temple of rock« (Doogie White). All four key singers, that is! On top of that, he invited iconic bassist Chris Glen (MSG) back on board. Then there’s Steve Mann, an excellent guitarist and keyboardist who worked on the McAuley Schenker Group albums and who, together with ex-Iron Maiden man Dennis Stratton, leads the legendary Lionheart. Drummer Ted McKenna would surely have played with Schenker on “Revelation” too, if the well-known rattling old lady with the scythe hadn’t tapped him on the shoulder not long ago. So for »Revelation«, German Bodo Schopf jumped in on drums, and just like Mann, he worked with Schenker in the McAuley Schenker Group era. This renewed crew of seasoned tomcats is, in modern times, the most authentic reflection of everything Schenker did with MSG (across its different eras).
Even »Resurrection« proved that Schenker had finally found the right »momentum« again after a long time, riding the wings of a freshly discovered giant burst of inspiration, which keeps him cranking out genuinely catchy and distinctive compositions from the true-believer school of hard rock. And that’s exactly what »Revelation« confirms. The album grabs you. From start to finish. Incredible, considering the gap between the two albums is so tiny. Schenker has found himself again in the company of his old MSG buddies. A reunion of old acquaintances that we had to wait a very, very long time for.
Michael has once again split the roles among the lead vocalists carefully and with finesse. For instance, wherever Bonnet shows up, the song automatically gets a dark charge. No wonder it clicked so perfectly on the Impelitterri albums. Take The Beast In The Shadow, a top-notch hard rock basher, stuffed with blackness and yet with an incredible musicality payoff. The »Fest« label earns its credibility above all in the tracks where the lead vocalists trade verses with each other, like the opener Rock Steady, with a majestic atmosphere that greets the listener up front and paves the runway for an adventure in the very foundations of hard rock as a genre. A little later, with all four voices combined, Sleeping With The Light On sketches out one of the most gripping choruses on »Revelation«. Under A Blood Red Sky, with Barden on lead vocals, carries one of the most lucid and sparkling riffs on the new album, which recently popped into the mind of the brilliant Schenker. We can’t quite declare any composition to have reached the level of perfection that Warrior had on the previous album, but the songs are balanced against each other in an incredibly high-quality way! The lead vocalists deliver an extremely contrasting range from track to track, and so they contribute substantially to the dynamic waves of moods and shifts in atmosphere across the album. In other words, they add that essential dot on the »i« to the otherwise tremendously infectious guitar playing of the sensitive wizard Schenker, who doesn’t lack charge and wit for even a second. Behind the Smiles (with a great new chorus melody in which Doogie White shines) opens up German to the bone! The intro is in fact utterly »German« and catchy, and it could just as well be a classic beer-hall chorus at an Augustiner or the idea for a motif in one of Beethoven’s symphonies. That’s the lucidity of a seasoned fox, the kind with which he teases and surprises so pleasantly and entertainingly all the time, »Revelation« included, and the reason he has become so highly valued and respected over the years.
Not to run too long: »Revelation« is exactly what we’ve quietly wanted from Michael Schenker for a long time, and what we knew he was capable of creating, even though for quite a while it eluded him, with the solid but often rather average output of the later MSG albums and then through the Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock era.
What’s surprising is that all the new songs are again extremely well-crafted, carry a high degree of detail, and have an incredible dynamic flow, a theatrically gripping payoff in the link between verse, pre-chorus and chorus. The build-up of the drama is clearly defined, with the crescendo reached in the distinctive chorus melodies that grab you the moment you hear them. Add to that the brilliantly inspired guitar playing, with all the all-important seasoning that Michael always brings with his insight and unique talent, and we can finally close the discussion on the new album. One more gem: We Are the Voice is sung by Ronnie Romero (Rainbow, CoreLeoni) and is one of the sharpest requiems for hard rock orthodoxy on »Revelation«.
An album that grabs you and carries you away. An album that only the iconic Michael Schenker could make, created with the kind of drive and charge that Michael’s »dearest friends« (and that comment would please Michael most«) Scorpions can only dream about today.
To hear how Michael Schenker Fest sound live, check out Rockline’s review of the first day of Bang Your Head festival on 12.07.2019, where Schenker and his crew played as one of the main headliners of the festival’s opening day.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Rock Steady
2. Under A Blood Red Sky
3. Silent Again
4. Sleeping With the Light On
5. The Beast in the Shadows
6. Behind the Smile
7. Crazy Daze
8. Lead You Astray
9. We Are the Voice
10. Headed For the Sun
11. Old Man
12. Still in the Fight
13. Ascension (instrumental)
Musicians:
Graham Bonnet – vocals on tracks 1, 4, 5, 11 and 12
Gary Barden – vocals on tracks 1, 4, 7, 10 and 11
Robin McAuley – vocals on tracks 1, 3, 4, 8 and 11
Doogie White – vocals on tracks 1, 2, 4, 6 and 11
Ronnie Romero – vocals on track 9
Michael Schenker – guitar, backing vocals
Steve Mann – keyboards, guitar
Chris Glen – bass guitar
Bodo Schopf – drums
