Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 12. 6. 2020
Production: James Christian
Album length: 48.14 min
Genre: AOR/Melodic Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
“New World – New Eyes” is the new studio album from AOR and melodic rock legends House Of Lords, helmed by the excellent composer, producer, arranger and signature vocalist James Christian. With “World Upside Down” and the move to Frontiers Music Srl., a new era began for the band, and between 2006 and 2020 House Of Lords, this latest one included, have stacked up a full eight studio albums.
The new album doesn’t bring any big musical revolution. For the most part it follows the sound and style of its predecessor “Saint of the Lost Souls” (2017), and it doesn’t stray far from the earlier releases either. So fans of the band can pretty much buy this one “blind,” too. James Christian produced the new album as well, but the overall feeling while listening is that it comes across a touch softer. Both in the arrangements and in the aesthetics of the sound production. Keyboard layers step more intensely into the front line of the soundscape, and on one of the tracks the album even surprises with woodwind arrangements.
As always, “New World – New Eyes” is very well balanced, mixing up-tempo tracks, mid-paced melodic rock marches and the ballads that simply have to be there. No need to add that, composition-wise, Christian has once again thought of everything, and there are no “artistic stumbles” this time either. Everything is right where it should be. Hooky choruses backed by layered arrangements of multi-vocal harmonies build atmospheric peaks in places and crawl under your skin in no time. Guitar wizard Jimi Bell, who recently joined the reactivated AOR legends Autograph, is still an important element alongside Christian’s distinctive voice, one that secures the band a special place in the incredibly dense and crowded genre of melodic rock and AOR. This album, too, carries a musical character that only House Of Lords, with their look and their work, can embody. No surprise there: Christian, Bell and drummer BJ Zampa have been the constants in the quartet since 2006, and newcomer bassist Chris Tristram has fit into the crew just as well, with a contribution that’s even stronger than on the previous studio release. Still, the real highlights of this record are the tracks cut from that arranging and composing mold that draws on the classic days of the late eighties, or let’s just say the band’s first three albums, led by the ravenous Chemical Rush.
This time around James Christian once again invited a few brilliant composers from the AOR world to collaborate, and alongside the singer’s own input they delivered a bunch of finely crafted songwriting solutions, even though we’re talking about a genre that said everything it had to say ages ago. As co-writers this time, the names on the songs are Mark Spiro (Giant, Bad English, Cheap Trick …), who contributed the lion’s share alongside Christian, as well as the refined Tommy Denander, Chris Pelcer and Richard Hymas. Thanks to these collaborations, the new album flirts more heavily with the pop rhetoric of the eighties. So the new album delivers everything that’s demanded and expected from the House Of Lords name. Surprises? Not anymore. Its aura reflects a minimal shift in the arrangements themselves, which this time means the emphasized keyboards that dress up Bell’s phrasing, and a production that sounds softer. This doesn’t bring seismic shocks to the band’s musical record, and the most we can expect from House Of Lords today is exactly this minimal tinkering with production tricks. Which means that on the very next album the production could swing back toward favoring guitar phrases, as “Big Money” (2011) did. Anyway, hats off to James Christian for all his steadfastness and perseverance. With “New World – New Eyes,” his House Of Lords once again make their fans happy with a full-blooded record, and the lovers of this genre too, a genre that’s pretty archaic in a lot of ways these days.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Change (What’s It Gonna Take)
2. New World New Eyes
3. One More
4. Perfectly (You And I)
5. The Both Of Us
6. Chemical Rush
7. We’re All That We Got
8. Better Off Broken
9. $5 Buck Of Gasoline
10. The Chase
11. The Summit
Lineup:
James Christian – vocals, keyboards, backing vocals, acoustic guitar
Jimi Bell – guitar, backing vocals
Chris Tristram – bass guitar, backing vocals
B.J. Zampa – drums, backing vocals
