Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: October 8, 2021
Production: Eric Mårtensson
Album length: 41.16 min
Genre: Melodic Hard Rock / Heavy Metal / Glam Metal Revival
Rating: 9.0/10
“Wired” is the ninth studio album from Swedish hard rock institution Eclipse, who broke through on the scene mainly thanks to the phenomenal “Bleed & Scream” (2012) and have been winning over a bigger and bigger crowd of followers from one album to the next. The band has been going for a good two decades under the wing of the phenomenal Eric Mårtensson, the main visionary behind its musical direction. Eric is a jack of all trades. He writes all the new music, produces it, sings lead, and on top of that he’s a multi-instrumentalist. Well, the partnership with guitarist Magnus Henriksson, who’s been in the band pretty much since day one, is an essential building block of Eclipse’s recognizable sound. Their very own musical dossier.
Eclipse have never fumbled the ball when it comes to songwriting. The last album “Paradigm” (2019, RockLine review) did hint that the creativity had dried up a bit, that the band had settled into its comfort zone and fired off the key expressive charges on its artistic journey. Still a more than good album, or let’s say a really good one, made exactly as expected, but with nothing that blew you away.
Well, even though the band puts out albums every two years, “Wired” is once again an achievement where Mårtensson managed to squeeze out of himself the stuff Eclipse are most prized for. Incredibly infectious musicality, a top-shelf level of bombast in the creation of drama theater, which adorns the band’s best studio albums, the ones that won over the music masses. This band is interesting because at its core it plays hard rock that steps over a thin, invisible line into heavy metal territory, so Eclipse often come across as straight-up melodic metal. On top of that they slyly add a poisonously catchy musicality. Here and there they lean toward glam metal revival elements, while at certain points they can stir up AOR sentimentality, and the godparents of this exceptional musicality are definitely to be found in bands like ABBA and Roxette. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Scandinavian pedantry and a sense for musicality as a rule never disappoint.
Twiligth, with an opening motif theatrically borrowed from Beethoven’s Eroica, is one of the most pompous tracks on the new record. The chorus is brilliantly catchy. The very first stretch of the album rides in on the wings of instant musical invasion, as Eclipse blow up the place with Roses On Your Grave, Dying Bered and the especially tingly, glam-metal Satruday Night (Hallelujah). A great track, brimming with bubbling optimism, as if life during lockdown never stopped at all, and with it Eclipse will lift whole halls to their feet on tour in no time. A song that will become part of the iron-clad live set. Then there’s Carved In Stone. It’s a punchy ballad that calms things down in the middle of the album, but it doesn’t bring any sugary excess that leaves a bad taste – the Scandinavian gloom stays relentless here too. Twilight, right after it, swings the album back up to full ‘party time’ level. A darker moment comes with the hugely dramatic yet extremely musical, melancholic Poison Inside My Heart.
Then there’s Bite The Bullet, one of the new album’s three singles. A venomous trick that throws sparks like the best days of glam metal (Autograph, Winger,…), with one of the mightiest riffs Eclipse have come up with for the new album and surely one of its highlights. In Eclipse’s current work, Scandinavian melodic hard rock and metal thus carry one of the key standard-bearers of the new age. Mårtensson really nailed everything this time. We Didn’t Come To Lose is also a tribute to the likes of Treat, Europe, Renegade, 220 Volt, etc… the stomp, pomp and bombast don’t let up for a second. Bite The Bullet, We Didn’t Came to Lose and the seriously fascinating closing track Things We Love carry Celtic folk ornaments played in harmonies in thirds, which (especially in the intros) bring to mind good old Gary Moore and his mid-eighties albums, which Hendriksson has definitely soaked up thoroughly.
And that’s not all. Fans of this kind of sound, and fans of this band in general, absolutely have to get hold of the digital version or the CD of the new album, because only those two contain an extra track. That’s Dead Inside, which doesn’t lag behind the rest of the album’s original material in any way, otherwise this paragraph in this review essay would be completely redundant.
Clearly the break from playing live did more than a little good for gathering the right creative inspiration, and the album “Wired” is once again bursting at the seams with all the compositional brilliance of Eric Mårtensson and his crew. Maybe the fact that Eclipse replaced their entire rhythm section before starting to record the new album also contributed to the freshness. “Wired” is a brilliant new album from the band and reaches the level of the best moments of their past albums (“Bleed & Scream”, “Armageddonize”, “Monumentum”) . As for the vocal performance, I can safely conclude that over the years Eric has grown and matured into a truly top-notch vocalist. The voice is sturdy, authoritative, and keeps lurking in a firm dominant.
“Wired” is an album that instantly shoots adrenaline into your blood and gives you goosebumps. An album that lifts you up, gives you wings, fills you with bubbling optimism and cheer. Even though it carries quite a few melancholic themes and gripping ‘drama theater’ moods, it also brings a nostalgic bundle of glam metal revival that thunderously calls you to a full-on party and debauchery. Eclipse are here. They’ve taken their place again shamelessly, uncompromisingly and with arrogant vehemence. Just as the best should.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Roses On Your Grave
2. Dying Breed
3. Saturday Night (Hallelujah)
4. Run For Cover
5. Carved In Stone
6. Twilight
7. Poison Inside My Heart
8. Bite The Bullet
9. We Didn’t Come To Lose
10. Things We Love
11. Dead Inside (bonus track – CD and digital only)
Lineup:
Erik Mårtensson – vocals
Magnus Henriksson – guitar
Victor Crusner – bass
Philip Crusner – drums
