Self-released
Production: Toni Jurij
Release year: 2006
Album length: 54.09 min.
Genre: Hard Rock
Well, well, well! It finally crawled into the world! “Feniks” – the second album from the legendary Slovenian hard rockers Mary Rose, who hail from Postojna. Before we get into a detailed breakdown, let’s run through a few basic facts. This album took a long, long time to make. It’s the follow-up to the band’s debut “Rocks Off” from 1990. Among the other material, it also features two re-arranged songs from that record (Akcija, Vse in malo več), which now come with fully Slovenian lyrics, just like everything else on “Feniks”. The twelve tracks are joined by Farewell as a bonus song, recorded in 1993, just a few months before Studio Tivoli burned down, taking Mary Rose’s dreams down with it for more than a decade. Those dreams are now getting a rebirth on their own ashes with “Feniks”. The tracks were already recorded this spring, but the band stuck to its own perfectionism and sent the whole thing back through another mix and mastering.
Mary Rose serve up hard rock stripped to the bone! Sauerkraut and sausage. The Slovenian way! Hard rock raised on the school of Deep Purple and Rainbow in a modern outfit (Kralj za eno noč, Sam, Križ je s tabo, the “funky groove” of Krivda – heads up, the booklet is missing one stanza in the lyrics of that last one (alas, the printing gremlin strikes again): “I’ve swept up all the shards of my crazy dreams, from now on I want to wake up to a new day without fear”). Why did I throw Rainbow in there? So nobody goes looking for a reference point in the other important Deep Purple offspring – Whitesnake, that is. There’s practically not a pinch of blues in Mary Rose. They thrive on the epic, bombastic classicism of the big melodies they build, which also marked the aforementioned Rainbow.
The riffs are open and well crafted, and they get under your skin from the very first listen. The band’s main focus is always melody, with compact, “heads and tails” songcraft and punch going hand in hand! In the riffing, the guitar is matched and backed by the Hammond organ, and together they make up the bulk of the band’s sound. The vocal is clean and explosive in every register, keeping its power practically untouched. At times he pulls toward B. Dickinson (Iron Maiden), and when he adds a bit of raspy roughness to the articulation, toward the Dickinson of the Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son era. Žak is the ideal solution for Mary Rose. His melodic vocal brings epic scale and pomp, while in the quiet passages he’s so skillfully crafted that he can bring in a touch of soul.
The guitar carries a pinch of the Scandinavian school of soloing. The solos are clean and precise, at times extremely fast, but always wrapped in a clear classical melody. There’s no blues to be found anywhere. Alilovski steers the notes skillfully and doesn’t squander them. The solos have a recognizable build and aren’t heaps of hastily sprinkled machine-gun bursts off a sheet of music (Petrucci, can you hear me!!!). At times the Hammond and guitar play in thirds, the typical Rainbow / Purple trick, which cunningly breaks up the potential monotony that repeating the basic riff could bring, lifts the dynamics of both the songs and the record to a higher level, and adds a touch of unpredictability to “Feniks”. The guys take care of this dynamic in the middle instrumental passages. Take Izgubljen v času, for example: it carries a classic explosive riff, while the middle instrumental section is broken up by a light jazzy line. These parts are just proof of the mastery of the whole quintet, who combine their know-how with an innate sense of melody with remarkable feel. In the lineup that recorded the album, Mary Rose have definitely found the right working chemistry. The band carries the big “English” balls that a rock outfit must have, so on that front we can truly talk about something exceptional on the Slovenian rock scene.
There are some AOR detours too! The song “Vse in malo več” follows the spirit of Journey. In production and playing approach it’s much rawer than the polish and softness of Journey, a kind of European version of Journey, very, very close to what the Scandinavians House Of Shakira do, built even on the legacy of good old Europe. The song “Zvezda” largely follows these lines too.
The core of Mary Rose that forms the melody is of course the Kastelec / Alilovski pairing. You can feel a touch of the great duos of this kind – Lord / Blackmore (though Alilovski has nothing to do with Blackmore, more with Rhoads, if I’m nitpicking), topped off by Žak’s unique and devilishly explosive vocal. The latter simply takes your breath away in performance, because it’s hard, really hard, to find a singer in melodic hard rock today who could pull off Slovenian-language material with such polished perfection. The bonus track Farewell, with its English lyrics, shows what exceptional potential Žak still has up his sleeve. So if I wishfully throw out a potential breakthrough abroad (which exists!) for Mary Rose, they’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about on that front. Like I said, a maximally polished rock singer that hard rock bands in the West would gobble up.
The peak of the record is the middle section! The run of three songs “Strah pred užitkom”, “Zven tišine”, “Želja”! “Strah pred užitkom” shows off the polished communication between keyboards and riffing and has extra tasteful symphonic arrangements, seamlessly woven into the song’s basic structure and serving to build up the aforementioned atmosphere. This one even opens in typical Dream Theater fashion, so Mary Rose touch on prog metal here. The track has a progressive pre-chorus and a rock-wound epic chorus. Pure perfection as far as finish goes, with bursts of fast-played scales and double harmonies in thirds woven in here and there. Next up is “Zven tišine”, where Žak’s feel for subtlety shines. The calm intro carries a light breeze of soul, especially because the song floats on a gentle classical piano melody before it explodes into a classic rock chorus, and the vocal again tackles the epic melodics with full lungs. In short, the track rolls and swells dynamically. The contrasts between the choruses and pre-choruses are literally triumphant at this point. An exceptional power ballad! The seventh song, “Želja”, carries a mystical hint of mid-to-late romantic-era Led Zeppelin in the opening main riff, but sophisticated and without a shred of darkness. Mary Rose masterfully carry on here in the style of a witty exchange of dynamic waves through subtler, keyboard-based parts, which they jerkily alternate with riff bombast. Yet another track you simply can’t add anything to or take anything away from.
Now the guys roll through the wicked, debauched Akcija, which flirts most obviously with sleaze/glam hard rock. No wonder, considering it’s a reworking of an original song first released in 1990 on the record “Rocks Off”. The subtle side of singer Žak, heard on “Zven tišine”, gets underlined once more in the “punchy chanson” “Najdražja”. The combination of classical piano and his vocal is obviously a winning one. The structure of the song again proves just how sharply defined the Mary Rose musicians are.
The guys don’t hide their chasing after women’s bodies in the verses, which definitely belongs in rock and roll. But the lyrics are by no means shallow, worn-out blunt stuff, and they certainly don’t belong in a beer dive. They express a maturity in which the male-female principle is perfectly clear to the guys, and let’s hope they’re successfully educating women about it too.
The two lines below from the song “Želja” embody the typical male-female principle of our creation:
“Everything’s easier now that you know I’m guarding your dreams.
No more fear, now that I’m here, you can sleep in peace.”
(the man has a clear vision through which he’ll create a goal, the woman surrenders to him fully, because she’s found security beside the man)
Mary Rose return in grand, triumphant style with “Feniks”. I’d go so far as to say that with the birth of “Feniks”, after the slump with Martin Krpan, we’re finally seeing the glory and honor of healthy melodic hard rock restored in Slovenia. As a unit, Mary Rose return with “Feniks” as the very definition and example of rock-solid cohesion, with a clear musical vision and direction. On top of that, they offer an album that visibly stands out next to similar works by Slovenian rock bands and that only a handful can successfully rival. At the same time, the die has been cast and the challenge set: topping it. In short, an album that in Slovenia must not and cannot go unnoticed. This time, no more!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9.0 / 10
Track list:
1. Kralj za eno noč
2. Sam
3. Izgubljen v času
4. Vse in malo več
5. Strah pred užitkom
6. Zven tišine
7. Želja
8. Akcija
9. Krivda
10. Zvezda
11. Najdražja
12. Križ je s tabo
13. Farewell (bonus track)
Lineup:
Žanil Tataj Žak – vocals, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, viola, violin on Farewell
Eki Alilovski – guitar, backing vocals
Mitja Kobal- bass guitar, backing vocals
Davor Kastelec – keyboards, backing vocals
Jure Doles – drums, percussion
Guest musicians:
Klemen Ogrizek – drums
Cveto Polak – bass guitar
Davor Klarič – keyboards
Sašo Gačnik – keyboards
Primož Ogrizek – keyboards
Jernej Pahor – backing vocals
