Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: May 22, 2020
Production: FM
Album length: 59.46 min
Genre: AOR / Melodic Rock
Rating: 10 / 10
“Surviving AOR fans, this way!” Unbelievable. All it took to get them back together was an invite to a single, solitary gig in 2009. At a sold-out Firefest, as the headliner. The very next year they put out a new studio album, and ever since then they haven’t just been playing stages regularly, they’ve been stacking up new records. One after another. Every single one is outstanding, so it’s hard to say which is better and which is worse. This is a band of remarkable consistency and stability. Including when it comes to lineup stability. We’re talking about the legendary FM, standard-bearers of the AOR sound (for the uninitiated: “radio-friendly rock”), which took shape in the British Isles in the mid-eighties, has its “own quirks,” and, despite being related, is worth telling apart from the west-coast stuff on the other side of the Atlantic, which was also shaking up the top of the charts in the eighties.
Today, of course, bands like FM are mostly followed only by their fans who spent their teenage years in the mid-eighties, plus a handful of “enlightened” (younger) lovers of melodic rock. That means AOR now ranks among the so-called archaic rock genres, which either have museum value or live on in forms of revivalism (with the exception of the millionaires Def Leppard, Journey and Foreigner), mostly in the rock underground.
FM, founded in 1984, needed a full 24 years for their first six albums, and just ten for the next five. So after the band’s reactivation in 2009, a new album has landed every two years or so. I caught them live in 2015 at the second official edition of Frontiers Rock festival, near Milan. FM have incredible charisma, an instantly infectious, penetrating aura, and their execution is known for its remarkably tight chemistry and sonic perfection.
Once again the band has delivered a brilliant production. This is an album you have to play loud, and then its sonic quality sends every hair on your body standing straight up! The development of the bombast is incredible! In their mature years the band – instead of rustling curtains of synthesizers – pays attention to organic sonic pastels, which comes across in modern production touches and a welcome sense of liveliness. The guitar phrasing has been very sharp and compact for quite some time now, and it also has to be said that Jim Kirkpatrcik, who is considerably younger than the other FM members, is a phenomenal solo juggler. On the new album he serves up a series of top-notch solos that are a real treat and, in their incredible fit with the very nature of the compositions, only reinforce the pompous hunger of the record. The mid-eight passages – alongside Overland’s already proverbial vocal firepower – are a tremendous generator of contrast within the songs, precisely thanks to Kirkpatrick’s soaring and witty solo bits. The guitar phrasing is again craftily backed by keyboards, which often reach for “Hammond still lifes” but never overpower the guitar lines. On top of that, the band has kept the essential trademarks that define eighties AOR and blended them incredibly well with their current musical philosophy. Those are, of course, the synth curtains, which the band deploys in a way that tickles the nostalgics just right, as we already witness in the opening title track Synchronized. The second all-important element is Steve Overland’s remarkably well-preserved voice, which breathes a soulful hairdo back into the songs and cements his place on the throne as the absolute vocal one-of-a-kind of the rock universe. 34 years after the album “Indescreet” came out, Overland sounds as if he recorded the vocals for it yesterday. The third key element, which the band again handles masterfully and which is just as essential for creating those retro-nostalgic feelings that blast you back to the eighties, is the arranging of multiple vocal harmonies, something FM earned a reputation for as brilliant specialists long ago.
An excellent, not to say first-rate example of the perfect marriage of old and new in one place is the song Broken. Ready For Me slides right in after it, closing the album in a deeply nostalgic way, and as such it’ll hand fans of eighties AOR one of the record’s highlights. The album takes off straight away on the wings of potent bombast, with the excellent opening catalysts Synchronized and Superstar following one another. Best Of Times comes next, where the band again reaches for acoustic elements, and then, of course, a proper AOR album wouldn’t be a proper AOR album without at least one heart-wrenching ballad. Well, this time there are more of the calmer moments, a full four, and the standout is the phenomenal drama of all dramas in Walk Through Fire, closely followed by End Of Days. The album is nicely balanced between the upbeat numbers, where FM show a measure of cheekily bubbling optimism and a pleasing dose of flirty roguishness, and the more subdued ones. The mellow Angels Cried is noticeably backed with bluesy rhetoric, but the guys don’t surprise anymore there, since they’ve shown that side on previous releases throughout the last decade.
Is there anything wrong with the new album at all? Absolutely nothing. Once again it’s a string of songs boasting a supremely polished songwriting style, which makes it clear that FM have simply driven their songwriting doctrine to perfection. They’re masters of their craft and hard to challenge. Even after all these years together. The moods keep flowing and vibrating at a high level, and the emotional peaks naturally land their best moments in the ultra-catchy choruses. But there’s a thing … Two tracks fewer wouldn’t have hurt this record in the slightest, and it would still clock in at over 50 minutes.
Synchronized is another top-notch chapter from this long-running British AOR outfit. Fans of the British take on the genre will be thrilled, and for the revivalists (the younger crop of melodic rock bands) it’ll once again serve as a handy textbook of AOR lessons.
What’s amazing is realizing that even in 2020, listening to a new FM album, you often end up thinking it just doesn’t get any better. And the album “Synchronized” has made that feeling relevant all over again.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Synchronized
2. Superstar
3. Best Of Times
4. Ghost Of You And I
5. Broken
6. Change For The Better
7. End Of Days
8. Pray
9. Walk Through The Fire
10. Hell Or High Water
11. Angels Cried
12. Ready For Me
Lineup:
Steve Overland – vocals, guitar, backing vocals
Jim Kirkpatrick – guitar, backing vocals
Jem Davis – keyboards, backing vocals
Merv Goldsworthy – bass guitar, backing vocals
Pete Jupp – drums, backing vocals
