Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Gotthard
Label: Nuclear Blast
Released: 2007
Length: 55.30
Rating: 4/5
Gotthard are blooming! “Domino Effect” is the culmination of their hard graft, and it clearly marks the artistic peak of their career! It’s incredible how they pull it off amid the acrobatics of a wild ride full of hairpin turns, with label changes and lineup changes. But clearly the Leoni – Lee duo is the driving creative nucleus that holds the band together and makes up the bulk of everything Gotthard are, have been and, let’s hope, will stay!
Despite that opening bow to the new record, we won’t be philosophizing much beyond the paragraph above. “Domino Effect” came out just a year and a half after “Lipservice” (autumn 2005). And the quality they’ve hit in such a short time proves the band works in the studio with ideal chemistry and, above all, knows how to strike while the iron is hot – top-grade stainless steel that tops the quality of “Lipservice”. Bands used to get there slowly (even in the old mainstream of the seventies and eighties), say with the third or fourth album bringing their artistic “peak” and honest recognition from labels (read: honest pay for honest effort) as well as from the music-loving masses (read: evergreen status). To our great luck, Gotthard are walking that same path in today’s world, like most hard rock and heavy metal relics (if we stick to just those two genres). They’re far from the mainstream and the MTV stench, because the politics there are a different game entirely, politics that in the new millennium deliberately wrecks the healthy evolution of bands. And Gotthard faithfully chase two goals, the pursuit of which keeps the band in a firm, proud erection. First, put together an album they themselves absolutely love; second, reward their loyal hard rock audience, which is far from small, with yet another superb album. Triumphant. Artistically, honestly free-spirited.
On to the material of “Domino Effect”. As Steve Lee revealed in one of his interviews, the lyrics on “Domino Effect”, as the album title itself hints, deal with the spreading of slander and lies. They pass from mouth to mouth (as the one and only sacred truth), through the media, until the news finally blankets the entire planet. An old, sick delusion of humankind, and in the hands of the cunning a manipulative magic wand – sadly, history teaches us nothing. Compared to “Lipservice”, “Domino Effect” has a bigger share of songs carrying a more tragic atmosphere, in the sense of delivering depth and higher intensity through the body of big lead melodies that blend a touch of melancholy drama and can even sound a tad sinister (even that from the always joyful and positivity-charged Gotthard – Gone To Far), all while not hiding a brush with genuine pain. The album has none of the straight-up marches of “Lipservice” and none of that nudging toward sinfully debauched crowd “boogie-ing”. You won’t find “sing-along” anthems like All We Are or Lift ‘U’ Up from “Lipservice”. “Domino Effect” isn’t so passionately hedonistic; it’s the dark twin brother of “Lipservice” and therefore a much more down-to-earth (or realistic) album. The guitars, tuned lower in the riffing, act like an extra effective vise that grabs the listener by the ears and, together with the big classic Gotthard melodies and the brilliant singer Steve Lee on vocals, effortlessly sends shivers down your spine.
As for the songs, they’re all consistently on the same level; there are no dips in quality from track to track. Every second of the album is equally good, which is unbelievable. Despite the band’s obsession with putting 14 or 15 tracks on their studio albums, you won’t find a single track of empty essence or a deliberate filler. And all that in just a year and a half, with ideas executed totally convincingly when it comes to combining compositional mastery, creating atmospheric freshness and capturing a living sound. The guys hit us with atmospheric drama masterfully dressed in the magic of melodic hard rock in Master Of Illusion – a stampeding “rocker” with a sensual punch of a sonic curtain woven between guitar riff and classic Hammond sound. Tracks like this make up most of the album, with a superb peak in Now, placed right before the closing ballad Where Is Love When Its Gone. Among them is The Call, the lead “single” from “Domino Effect”, a typical Gotthard power ballad that was released as a “single” precisely because of that typicality – indispensable, essential and cunningly clever, so very “Gotthard”! The album boasts a consistency that isn’t derailed even by the aforementioned closing ballad Where Is Love When Its Gone, impressively mournful and seasoned with an Alpine “squeezebox” (rockers – fear not!). Unlike “Lipservice”, where two ballads were lined up back to back at the end of the album, this time the move doesn’t bother at all, especially because Gotthard have never done a ballad like Where Is Love When Its Gone, and it easily keeps the listener awake through the final stretch of this triumphant album. Bad To The Bone stands out as a rustic, “Whitesnake-style” number, yet it’s totally tragically fired up. “Domino Effect” has none of the ingratiating sweetener of “Lipservice”. It’s a solid, grounded landing and, among hard rock releases in 2007, definitely one of the artistic peaks.
Time will confirm the hints of an evolutionary creative peak supposedly reached with the perfection delivered on “Domino Effect”. I can simply sum it up like this: “Domino Effect”, the band’s ninth consecutive studio album, is their best-dressed hard rock album yet! May this creative momentum last as long as possible!
Lineup
Steve Lee – vocals
Leo Leoni – guitar
Freddy Scherer – guitar
Marc Lynn – bass
Hena Habegger – drums
Track list
1. Master Of Illusion
2. Gone Too Far
3. Domino Effect
4. Falling
5. The Call
6. The Oscar Goes To You
7. The Cruiser (Judgement Day)
8. Heal Me
9. Letter To A Friend
10. Tomorrow’s Just Begun
11. Come Alive
12. Bad To The Bone
13. Now
14. Where Is Love When Its Gone
