Label: AOR Heaven
Release date: April 30, 2021
Production: Escape
Album length: 54.38 min
Genre: AOR/Melodic Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
Escape are a British band from West Yorkshire, fronted by the excellent guitarist and composer Vince O’Reagan. Over his career he’s played on the albums of a good handful of artists who, unlike Bob Catley (Magnum), with whom O’Reagan worked on two of Catley’s studio albums, never managed to get their music out to the wider masses (Alibi, Arabia, Legion). Makes sense. We’re talking about new times and reheated AOR archaisms. O’Reagan revived his band Escape, which put out two studio albums in 2012 and 2013, last year and freshened it up, which means the lineup got shuffled around. He also figured out it would be very handy to serve up a new official musical document. The band is actually a lot older than the release dates of those two albums suggest, since Escape had already used some very old ideas and compositions from the early nineties on it.
What “Fire In The Sky” offers is really not a new Escape studio album, but more of a compilation. Or rather, a compilation of the “best of” Vince O’Reagan. It picks tracks from the Escape album “Borderline” (2013) and O’Reagan’s solo album “Temptation” (2014). With the blessing of Magnum singer Bob Catley, he also put two Catley songs on “Fire In the Sky” (Blinded By A Lie, Walk On Water), which he wrote and which come from Catley’s solo album “Spirit of Man” (2006). So O’Reagan is the author of every one of the selected compositions.
O’Reagan brought only keyboardist Irvin Parratt into the new lineup, who played on the second Escape album and on O’Reagan’s solo albums. Vocals, bass and drums are the domain of new members. The material sounds very classic at its core. The eighties inspiration is everywhere, no doubt about it. In O’Reagan’s playing, especially in the solos, you can occasionally pick up the influence of Journey wizard Neal Schon. If you were looking for comparisons among older AOR outfits from the British Isles, Shy would be the closest, while given the refreshed production approach, the sound on Fire in the Sky comes close to the Serpentine project and/or the band Vega (O’Reagan also spent a short time in the band Eden with Nick Workman). In terms of production and arrangements, comparisons with the solo work of former Saga singer Rob Moratti are also in order. Besides the hugely polished, updated production, which squeezes out the maximum of pomp and bombast, the vocal approach and tone of singer Graham Beales add to that feeling: clean, authoritative and very musical. In the higher registers he occasionally recalls the late Tony Mills (Shy, TNT). The sound of layered, rustling synths, with harmonies lifted straight from the eighties, is a concrete and important building block that, with its piercing phrasing, kindles real pomp theater.
There are definitely no duds on this compilation. It’s a calibration. A tuning of experienced musicians’ musical philosophy for new times. The release of “Fire in the Sky” is a very welcome wake-up call for all the faithful (in Slovenia they were never exactly thick on the ground) who follow what’s going on in modern melodic rock and AOR archaism. By refreshing its, or rather O’Reagan’s, songwriting catalog, the band has caught a fresh wind in its sails and so announced a proper studio album that will consist entirely of new original material. Judging by the selection of songs on this excellent collection, “Fire in the Sky”, expectations for Escape and their new studio effort are more than justifiably high.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Lost And Found (4:34)
2. Heroes In The Night (4:39)
3. Temptation (4:33)
4. Restless Heart (4:34)
5. Something To Believe In (4:30)
6. Blinded By A Lie (4:36)
7. Coming Home (4:06)
8. Borderline (4:16)
9. Destiny (5:05)
10. Walk On Water (4:29)
11. Fire In The Sky (9:10)
Lineup:
Graham Beales – vocals
Vince O’Regan – guitar, backing vocals
Irvin Parratt – keyboards, backing vocals
Pete Betts – bass, backing vocals
Bob Pears – drums
