Artist: Jaded Heart
Label: Fastball Music Records
Release: 2012
Length: 55:49
Rating: 4/5
Awesome German melodic rockers Jaded Heart aren’t giving up. Three years after the release of »Perfect Sanity« (2009), its successor »Common Destiny« is here. The era of the band with Michael Bormann on vocals, the era when plenty of music critics pegged Jaded Heart as some kind of German version of Def Leppard, is long behind us. The new Jaded Heaert haven’t sounded like that for quite a few years now. In both production and arrangements they lean harder and harder into the trademarks of heavy metal punch and aggression. The production is therefore the typical, classic German one: raw, direct, with the guitar riffs pushed right up front. Basically the production we know from modern Euro power metal.
If »Perfect Sanity« was a proper blowing off of steam, with Jaded Heart burning with no brakes and no restraint whatsoever, firing on every cylinder of a 16-cylinder engine, then »Common Destiny« is a touch more balanced, with the forces better distributed in how the building blocks of the sound coexist. So the new album brings more sonic finesse and class. But not so much in terms of changes in how the sound is produced. That stays in the same format. Alive, white-hot. German!
On »Common Destiny« Jaded Heart have once again put most of the songs together in a more fluid way compared with »Perfect Sanity«. So the reach and the bite of those predatory, melodic choruses is bigger, catching fire on the first spin more than on the predecessor. It all fits together nicely in this picture. Fahlberg’s vocals are excellent, melodically clean and wide-ranging, with added vocal melodies that harmonize with the lead in the choruses and deepen the drama of the hooks. The band has really written some venomously infectious chorus melodies that will keep teasingly massaging the ears of any true melodic rock fan for a long time, which is why »Common Destiny« sounds much nicer, and above all gets stuck in your ear much faster than its predecessor. You can feel the bombast of the production especially intensely in the mid-tempo songs, like Saints Denied, which carries one of the most successful melodic chorus hooks. This song especially benefits from the exceptional flexibility in how the sound’s building blocks are arranged, magnifying the contrasts and building up the captured moods. A cannon-like rhythm line on one side, a massive wall of riffs on the other, and in the middle outstanding harmonized weaves of vocal lines. Jaded Heart are seasoned studio masters, after all, so of course you know the bass is clearly articulated throughout and cuts through concrete in full.
Of course, the surge of true metal motifs that Jaded Heart’s music has picked up in recent years certainly doesn’t stay subdued on the new album either. There are some sensible parallels with the production aggression of the likes of Pink Cream 69, and this combination of predatory melodicism and raw production also recalls the approach of the great late German power metallers Angel Dust (the pre-chorus in Are We Mental). In short, a hint like that says a lot, and you quickly conclude that it’s no good messing with the new Jaded Heart either.
As has been the Jaded Heart habit in recent years, it’s again hard to find peaks that stand out on the album. The songs feel equally strong, and the album as a whole is extremely compact and fully focused, which means the crew works in unison and on the same wavelength. With You alone, which opens the album, instantly unfolds all the recognizable trademarks of the post-Bormann era of Jaded Heart. So if you like the records from »Helluva Time« onward, welcome home. Those of you who like all of Jaded Heart’s periods are on the same wavelength with »Common Destiny« anyway, while those of you who swear only by releases with the vocal nightingale Michael Bormann in the lineup will simply stay reserved toward every new Jaded Heart release. So also toward »Common Destiny«.
That’s it. Another excellent album from the band. Quite a bit more infectious than the furious predecessor. So, all things considered, »Common Destiny« is also an album that boasts a lot more drama and theater, creating highly vibrant moods that ignite in the melodic choruses from the first listen (that’s the basic requirement of a good melodic rock album). The instrumental parts are also set up to magnify, amplify and deepen the reach of those moods. Generally, these cunning, experienced masters know how to alternate brilliantly between keyboard passages and white-hot, »scandi-like« ultrasonic solo acrobatics from a master of guitar playing, who, besides Johan Fahlberg, is the other Swede in today’s Jaded HEart lineup, Peter Östros. The guy is an outstanding musician and guitarist, certainly unfairly overlooked in this boundless sea of rock guitarists. He’s bursting with a sparkling knack for laying down a seductive guitar riff and then laying down a brilliant solo.
»Common Destiny« keeps Jaded Heart’s quality constant. It’s up to you, dear fans of the band, to place it on your own personal ranking of Jaded Heart’s studio albums. It’s an excellent Jaded Heart album, one more in the series, and let’s hope the band keeps this great form going for the whole future of rock.
Lineup
Johan Fahlberg – vocals
Peter Oestros – guitar
Henning Wanner – keyboards, guitar, backing vocals
Micheal Mueller – bass, backing vocals
Axel Kruse – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Markus Grosskopf (Helloween) – bass (track no. 11)
Production
Jaded Heart, Claus Lausmann & Michael Voss
Tracklist
1. With You
2. Saints Denied
3. Into Tears
4. Buried Alive
5. I Believe
6. Run And Hide
7. Are We Mental
8. My Destiny
9. No More Lies
10. Life Is Beautiful
11. Higher
12. Fire And Flames
