Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: January 21, 2022
Production: Alessandro Del Vecchio
Album length: 48.06 min
Genre: Hard Rock / AOR
Rating: 8.0/10
Giant, the hard rock supergroup founded in 1987 by the Huff brothers in Nashville (Tennessee, USA), released its new and fifth studio album overall, “Shifting Time”, on January 21, 2022.
The band’s history goes back to the second half of the eighties. Riding on the wings of Dann and David Huff, Giant put out two phenomenal albums in 1989 and 1991 that became cult hard rock/AOR classics. Both are still considered works of sheer musical perfection today. A band with outstanding potential, though, that didn’t know how to cash in on it and basically fell apart. Not literally. But it was left without its backbone. The soul, the heart, the engine. With Dann Huff, the main songwriter, vocalist and guitarist, out the door, things just weren’t the same anymore. And on top of that, putting out albums ten years apart without that guy at the helm can’t possibly bring those times back, or revive even a sliver of the magic that would lead you back to the first two Giant records.
Two solid albums followed: the third, with the tellingly titled “III”, which Giant kind of ‘missed the boat’ with, since it came out almost ten years after “Time To Burn” and the audience had forgotten about the band in the meantime, and “Promisled Land”, with Terry Brock on vocals and guitarist John Roth, released in 2010. Both deserve some attention, but that’s about it. The new “Shifting Time” also delivers very little of what the Giant name is supposed to stand for. In fact, only the name is left. Printed on the album cover. Don’t get me wrong. “Shifting Time” is a very high-quality album, but it’s closer to a melodic rock revival than to anything echoing from “Last Of The Runaways” (1989) or “Time To Burn” (1992).
The rhythm section alone, which is the original one, can’t pull that off by itself, since neither David Huff nor bassist Mike Brignardello is a songwriter. John Roth, also the guitarist of Winger, is a more than brilliant musician and an extremely refined guitarist, not to mention the newcomer, Swedish vocalist Kent Hilli. When David Hff heard Perfect Plan’s version of the Giant classic Stay, he was sold on Hilli right away. Interestingly, on that Perfect Plan version of the Giant classic, Hilli even evokes some of Dann Huff’s vocal charm, which the album Shiftin Time as a whole shows only in fleeting moments.
So you’d think that even without Dann Huff, “Shifting Time” is a proper Giant lineup. And it is. The album is good. It’s got everything. Punchy moments like the cranked-up opening catalyst Never Die Young, mid-tempo tracks like the atmospheric follow-up Don’t Say A Word, and later My Breath Away. Then there’s the phenomenal closing drama theater of the Don’t Wanna Loose You and I Walk Alone sequence. Ballad moments aren’t missing either (It’s Not Over, Anna Lee), nor are tracks that tease a lot more on the artistic side, like Highway Of Love, a song with one of the album’s most inventive hooks, decorated with Southern-flavored melodies. The songwriting is certainly polished, complete and refined. However, the bulk of the material comes from musicians who are in one way or another tied to Frontiers Music Srl.: Alessandro Del Vecchio, Kristian Fyhr, Pete Alpenborg, as well as Jonas Eriksson and Mike Palace. Hilli screams his heart out on the songs. No doubt about that. A great vocalist. But it’s interesting that the new album, released under the Giant name, has more in common with Perfect Plan and some other bands from the European strain of the melodic and hard rock revival (especially the Scandinavian ones) than with classic Giant. “Shifting Time” is a big album, then, but by no means a ‘giant’ one.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Shifting Time
2. Let Our Love Win
3. Never Die Young
4. Don’t Say A Word
5. My Breath Away
6. Highway Of Love
7. It’s Not Over
8. The Price Of Love
9. Standing Tall
10. Anna Lee
11. Don’t Wanna Lose You
12. I Walk Alone
Lineup:
Kent Hilli – vocals
John Roth – guitar
Mike Brignardello – bass
David Huff – drums
