Artist: Ambition
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2006
Ambition is a project. So what the hell kind of ambition is hiding behind it? The ambition to bring the excellent, forgotten singer Tom Griffin, who once sang for the legendary pomp rockers Trillion, back “from the dead” and onto the stage. After 20 years of abstinence, Tom did pop up on the scene for a moment in 2002, guesting on the new studio album by Mecca. Under the ambitious initiative of Frontiers Records boss Serafino Perugino to return Tom Griffin to the scene, Ambition was born. With the excellent Italian producer Fabrizio Grossi (Glenn Hughes, Vertigo, Starbreaker,…) at the helm, and songwriters Joey Carbone (who worked with former Toto singer Joseph Williams), Christinan Wolff and Joey Leblanc on board, the whole thing started taking an ever clearer shape.
Two years ago, the project Ambition, mapped out this way, started creating its musical material at full steam. As an enormously important link among all the musicians on this planet, the renowned, “greased up with every grease” guitarist Tommy Denander joined the project, having worked with so many big names in rock music that it would take too long to list them. The genius of this guitarist’s expressive guitar motifs, which once again polished the riffs with perfect soloing and seasoned the whole thing with juicy guitar embellishments, artfully laid over the basic melodies, is indispensable this time around too.
“Ambition” is an AOR hard rock album from head to toe. For a project, it’s basically a release that has blown past all expectations. It’s fresh, it’s got balls, it’s got excellent “deep” production, a bass line wound up with a phenomenal rhythm groove, the guitars and keyboards sit in the right production balance, the pulsing drive of the riffs in the melodic frameworks is there, and what matters most in this genre, the vocal performance is flawless! Griffin is excellent in his performance, and it’s incredible how his voice could have stayed so shamefully overlooked! The vocal is white-hot enough when it needs to attack and incredibly soft when emotion has to be underlined. The backing vocal lines (reaching for the grandeur of Magnum or modern Uriah Heep – the song Hunger, with Jean Michel Byron on vocals) fit ideally with the main vocal line and are chosen with all the filigree perfection that musicians with experience and a burning ambition to reach their goal simply have. This is an album ruled by big melodies, one that every fan of AOR hard rock sound has to appreciate, because it offers all the brilliant polish that can come from fully exploiting everything a voice in rock music can generally offer. A chorus like the ones on the songs Together or Too Much (with the ideal interplay of Griffin and Byron) reaches compositional perfection, and “Ambition” manages to capture an especially high atmospheric intensity right in its closer, Waiting In My Dreams, which Joe Vana sings along with Griffin, and which probably carries the strongest chorus on the whole “Ambition” record.
The album opens very kindly to the ears; at first you think you’ve switched on a radio playing “eighties” hits (the song Hold On). It actually confirms right away all the remarks of the previous paragraph about “Ambition”. But the songs aren’t a copy of a copy. The album has high dynamics, with motifs and atmosphere surging lively throughout! For that we can thank Griffin’s excellent sense of reaction in the chosen situation when bringing the desired feelings to life, where he convinces in this quality especially with his approach on the mid-tempo All I Need or on the song Together. “Ambition” is a mature AOR hard rock album with a special charm, one that’s distinctive and recognizably captivating. Worth your attention.
Lineup
Thom Griffin – vocals
Tommy Denander – guitar
Fabrizio V.Zee Grossi – bass guitar, keyboards
Masayoshi Yamasuka – drums
Joachim Cannaiuolo – drums
Guest musicians:
Jean Michel Byron – vocals on “Hunger”, backing vocals on “Hypocrites” and “Too Much”
Joe Vana – backing vocals on “Waiting In My Dreams”
Production
Fabrizio Grossi
Track List
1. Hold On (4:38)
2. Hypocrites (4:33)
3. Alone I Cry (4:28)
4. Shaping Fate & Destiny (4:34)
5. All I Need (5:36)
6. Make It Alright (4:01)
7. No Wasted Moments (5:01)
8. Together (4:37)
9. Too Much (5:13)
10. Hunger (4:30)
11. The Promise (4:35)
12. Waiting In My Dreams (5:26)
Running time: 57:43
