Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Europe
Label: Ear Music Records
Released: 2009
Running time: 47.15
Rating: 2.5/5
The third album since Swedish hard rockers Europe reunited brings nothing new. Not for the crowd eagerly waiting on this record, and not for the band, though the band is nowhere near seeing it that way. Thank God for the band’s huge self-confidence, although from here it’s not far to a state of pigheadedness, which can do you more harm than good.
“Last Look At Eden” is an album that makes it instantly clear that Europe grew up as “teenagers” listening to Deep Purple, Rainbow and UFO. The songs follow a template written according to the old-fashioned hard rock formula: two pre-choruses, two choruses, a middle instrumental part and a repeat of the chorus. Europe have proven themselves excellent arrangers in the past, and their golden-era output remains untarnished and huge. They’re no strangers to the know-how, power and skill it takes to set up a guitar pattern, put a sturdy rhythmic undercarriage beneath it and enrich the whole background with a magnification of melody, emotion and, of course, dynamic swells, once the well-known approach of vocalist Joey Tempest on one side and the keyboards on the other kicks in.
Up to here everything’s okay, totally okay. This would be a great record if… Europe hadn’t put out two very similar albums before it. The problem with the album is that even after ten-plus listens it sounds one-dimensional, and the songs are as alike as two peas in a pod. Most of this criticism falls on the punkish production, which the Europe name doesn’t deserve, even though the band of course thinks completely differently. The guitars are literally clipped and the guitar riffs don’t spew out any energy at all. Let’s zoom in on Catch That Plane. It carries an old-school riff that makes no secret of the fact that the guys discovered Deep Purple’s “In Rock” very early on. And? Now you hand the combination of organ sound and guitar riff over to a homegrown punk production, which dictates a blatant smearing of the guitar and, in the solos, heavy poking of the wah-wah effect, which warps the sound even further. Somehow it doesn’t work. It really hurts when the great John Norum masterfully tears off a few solos that just don’t shine under such dirty production. It doesn’t click, you wear yourself out and strain every nerve looking for the magic that would rock you to your core and suck you into the vortex of the band’s unique world.
The album’s two highlights with great musical potential in the arrangement department, No Stone Unturned and Last Look At Eden, hammer the last nail into the album’s coffin, because while listening to both you start thinking what excellent tracks these could have been if Europe had turned the knobs in the studio considerably differently (the production on both is too weak)! With production like this, the question arises whether the keyboard intro on the album is even necessary, and in general, whether it still makes any sense for Europe to use keyboards at all. First, in this new production they don’t achieve the desired effect of building three-dimensional sonic space, and second, they don’t intensify any moods whatsoever. All the attention is otherwise grabbed by Norum’s dissonant-sounding riffing, which has no volume, no tightness, no noise, no possessiveness, no arrogance. It’s like grabbing desert sand that slowly trickles through your clenched fist. The feelings after listening to the new Europe album stay just as empty.
As I said, this isn’t a bad album if you know, or first get to know, only this Europe album. Otherwise, all of you who know the band’s catalog won’t be fooled, because every song, one after another, will leave you cold. Even Tempest mostly sticks to predictable mid-ranges, though he can still work “wonders” with his voice in the higher registers too! On purpose. That gives the album an extra punk accent that’s (for Europe!) thoroughly off-putting. There are plenty of hard rock bands that broke up in the first half of the nineties and left a strong mark on the rock map. Then they reunited in their mature years like Europe. And among them you’ll be hard pressed to find a bright exception that reaches the quality level of the old albums, from the days when the band’s identity, inspiration and creative hunger were all there. A bright exception is, for example, Tesla, with both of their “post-comeback” albums “Into The Now” (2004) and “Forever More” (2008), where they managed to successfully combine the modern with the old-school. I suggest the Europe guys look to Tesla as a role model in the search for their long-lost identity. “Last Look At Eden” is a nice, low-key rock album, which proves that mature men are well-off, that they don’t get bored at pleasant hangouts in the studio, and that they’ll fill halls again on the strength of their old hits. If the old farts aren’t bored, the end product sure is! So let’s gaze one last time into paradise. Literally.
Lineup
Joey Tempest – vocals
John Norum – guitar
Mic Michaeli – keyboards
John Leven – bass
Ian Haugland – drums
Production
Tobias Lindell & Europe
Tracklist
1. Prelude
2. Last Look at Eden
3. Gonna Get Ready
4. Catch That Plane
5. New Love in Town
6. The Beast
7. Mojito Girl
8. No Stone Unturned
9. Only Young Twice
10. U Devil U
11. Run with the Angels
12. In My Time
