Artist: Lec Zorn Project, The
Released: 2007
The Lec Zorn Project is an ambitious little beast. Its mastermind Lec Zorn, a bassist and keyboardist who also writes the lyrics and arranges the music, has gathered a whole pile of melodic hard rock virtuosos under one roof. “It Began In The Underground” took a full 11 years to make, and it makes no secret of Zorn’s obsession with the sound and style of the eighties. No wonder he likes to call himself “grunge’s worst nightmare”. Figuratively speaking, it sounds like a direct invitation to an adventure straight back into the first half of the eighties. And the horizons of the past are already opening up, with names like Survivor, Asia, Journey, Boston, Shooting Star, Styx and, above all of them, Kansas. Here in 2007 it’s hard to believe, but “It Began In The Underground” lives up to those claims with plenty of dignity.
Let’s skip quickly through the material. The opener Lecoverture right away nudges at the Kansas worship (Leftoverture). It’s an instrumental exercise in atmosphere-building, based on majestic guitar harmonies, and of course while listening you can’t tell right away what’s waiting for you further into the album. Long Time Coming, which follows, is the most genuine catapult launch straight back into the eighties. Eighties AOR fans, good morning! From here on, all the way to the end of the record, the comparisons with the bands from the paragraph above make perfect sense. And of course we can’t skip the standout, phenomenal cover of the Kansas classic Play The Game Tonight from the album “Vinyl Confessions” (the 1982 release year is downright perfect here), with excellent vocals from Lars Säfsund, who comes very close to the expressive power of clean melodic lines that, say, Jeff Scott Soto has. To capture the energy of John Elefante and, indirectly, Steve Walsh, it’s simply a brilliant choice. The track Second Chance appears on the album in two very different versions, and during the first few spins of the record they honestly feel like two completely different songs. The first version is more rocked-up and jagged. It’s placed as the third track on the album and makes no secret of its classic “Journey-esque” leanings, especially when the vocals of the Swede Pierre Weinsberg climb to the highest registers. Fighting Chance can’t hide that its basic riff motif references Eye Of A Tiger (orig. Survivor), but with a cleverly altered cosmetic makeover that makes the song phenomenally appealing, without worrying about the reference. The drama-laden build from pre-chorus to chorus is masterfully escalated and catchy, and the hair on your skin stands up in an instant. The second instrumental on the album, the tenth track, called Perseverance, is really the true closer of the album, a closing before the closing. Its outro motif is remarkably similar to the one in Lecoverture. And the interesting stuff is far from over after it, but the earlier remark about a closing before the closing makes more sense because Going The Distance leans so openly on Asia’s Here Comes The Feeling, so strongly that in that sense Going The Distance is effectively the record’s first bonus track. At the very end there’s yet another version of Second Chance, extended, with a different vocalist, and it feels a touch more progressive, with noticeably richer keyboard arrangements and an even more grabby, dramatic atmosphere than the first version. That means the album wraps up in a hugely vivid way, both in dynamics and in the mood it captures. Those are the more interesting moments of the album. As for the rest of the material, it steers, in its basic melodies and captured atmosphere, along the tracks of the bands listed in the first paragraph of this review.
The production is polished eighties through and through. The separation of the instruments is perfectly clear, including a pronounced bass foot. The vocal harmonies are an essential extra and one of the basic building blocks Lec uses to build that unmistakable AOR eighties energy, with its dreamy, yearning pomp. Alongside the splendid vocal harmonies that surround the superior purity of the main, center-placed vocals, the guitar riffs are measured out at a distance and, in the overall sound picture, are an equal partner to the keyboards in shaping the melody and the general atmosphere. This album surprises with its high level of fluid listenability. It’s over in the blink of an eye. The songs are simply flawlessly composed.
Lec Zorn is a guy from the US, and I’d positively urge you not to let the potential fear of a joke about a color-negative print of the cover of some Zlatko Dobrič album put you off from digging deeper into the content of this record. It’s honestly incredible, and barely acceptable for this day and age, to release a melodic hard rock album with this kind of countryish, Kenny Rodgers-style cover. A dismal move. There’s no point investigating the reason, but maybe it lies in the general self-satisfaction and smug self-assurance of the so-called (sadly) globally bossy imperial “American nation”, whose narcissistic pathos has, for a few generations now, unconsciously been inducing stomach cramps that irresistibly make you want to puke. And that’s practically the only minus we run into here. It’s a very off-putting one, though. But since the music is what counts, thankfully this thing has nothing to do with it. So “It Began In The Underground” is one of today’s lost little gems, because albums like this simply aren’t made anymore in 2007. It doesn’t really contribute anything to the evolution of rock music, but it’s highly welcome precisely because of its rarity and endangered status. It’s like physically discovering a dinosaur we thought went extinct long ago. A discovery in all its original purity and beauty. This is AOR!
Lineup
Tracy White – vocals, backing vocals
Phil Vincent – vocals, backing vocals
Lars Säfsund – vocals, backing vocals
Pierre Wensberg – vocals
Chris Demming – backing vocals
Mike Walsh – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Michael Riesenbeck – guitar
Eric Ragno – keyboards
Tommy Denander – guitar, keyboards
Lec Zorn – bass, keyboards
Eli Hludzik – drums
Ivan Arnold – drums
Production
Lec Zorn
Tracklist
1. Lecoverture
2. Long Time Coming
3. Second Chance
4. Play The Game Tonight
5. Eternal Flame
6. Fighting Chance
7. You Keep me In The Dark
8. Starting All Over Again
9. The Rush Of Passion’s Fire
10. Perseverance
11. Going The Distance
12. Second Chance (Alternate Take)
Album length: 50.00
