Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Q5
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2016
Duration: 64:52
Rating: 4/5
Q5 are an American band from Seattle who put out two studio albums, in 1984 and 1986, that music connoisseurs now regard as cult classics, a cunning blend of classic heavy metal, melodic hard rock and the then-popular AOR. In short, both albums mirror the rock’n’roll trends of the time. Distant mirrors, mind you. A full thirty years had to pass before the stars aligned and Q5 finally squeezed out a third studio album. Three of the original members are still in today’s quintet: singer Jonathan Scott K., guitarist Rick Pierce and bassist Evan Sheeley.
What »New Wolrd Order« offers is a surprise, retro-minded and artistic. Yet, all things considered, a thoroughly positive one. What does that mean? Forget anything resembling the album »When the Mirror Cracks«. Worshippers of that big eighties arena rock sound, led by all the surviving and tireless, inconsolable AOR diehards, sadly you won’t be getting a sequel to it this time. »New World Order« should have come out in 1982, or a year or so earlier. You’re not shocked by that hint, are you? Think of the album »Steel the Light«, the famous Q5 debut, which you load up with NWOBHM elements and a clearly noticeable old-school bluesy rock touch, the kind that held a bunch of bands from the NWOBHM movement of the day together, led by the classic Saxon. You take the whole thing further toward minimalism, so that the occasional riff directness summons AC/DC into the mix too. The song The Right Way, in the lead phrase of the verse, sounds incredibly close to the guitar phrases Judas Prist created in the days of the albums “Screaming for Vengenace” (1982) and/or “Defenders of the Faith” (1984). So Q5 is, at its best, an excellent retro product with a proper NWOBHM sound, bursting with first-rate, classically built heavy metal riffs and incredibly fitting guitar (harmonic) embellishments (including picking over the riffs) when it comes to arrangements, because those very embellishments couldn’t sit any better in the basic guitar phrases of the passages. The same goes for the polished guitar duels of Rick Pierce and new member Dennis Turner. The album is full of dynamite and will surely go off like a rocket live! In short, thirteen new songs work brilliantly. You just have to put the album »When the Mirror Cracks« out of your head and everything is fine. Which, of course, for plenty of people, given this whole story of Q5’s new take on music, won’t go down easy. Let me add the following by way of consolation. For all the findings above, the band hasn’t lost its keen sense of musicality. Still, the only song with a whiff of dabbling in AOR is Just One Kiss, whose embellishment (laid over the lead phrase) reaches for something Boston might have made in the era of the album »Don’t Look Back« (1977).
Jonathan Scott K. has lost some vocal height over the years. His voice in the production now sits radically close to the range of Biff Byford (Saxon) or Terry Dark (Jameson Reid). That height with which he vibrated like a nightingale on »When the Mirror Cracks« (especially with the synthesizers and the overall arrangements of the songs) used to recall, now the lost songs of Kingdom Come (the opening Living On the Borderline), now the English band FM (Cold Heart). It’s precisely the vocal range of Jonahtan’s seasoned, thickened voice that is the extra element adding to the feeling that we’re listening to a classic metal-shaped album that sounds »retro«. Given which generation the core faces of today’s Q5 lineup belong to, that’s hardly surprising.
In short. The album works. It ignites. The ravenous voltage is also kept up by the excellent “live” production, in which the fat bass thump is clearly audible (pulsating)! The compositions hold up, and even though there are a whopping 13 of them on the album (which is of course too many), there are no notable dips in quality between them. The album feels varied thanks to its range of ideas. A huge time gap of creative hibernation is certainly always a fine way to gather polished ideas. But oh, you pay dearly. It’s a shame about all those years. So. Everyone who’s nostalgic for NWOBHM, check out the album »New World Order«, no excuses.
Q5 – Halfway to Hell:
Q5 – The Right Way (official video):
Lineup
Jonathan Scott K. – vocals
Rick Pierce – guitar
Dennis Turner – guitar
Evan Sheeley – bass
Jeffrey McCormack – drums
Production
Q5
Track list
1. We Came Here to Rock
2. One Night in Hellas
3. The Right Way
4. New World Order
5. Tear Up the Night
6. Halfway to Hell 02:59
7. A Prisoner of Mind
8. Unrequited (A Woman of Darkness and Steel)
9. Just One Kiss
10. Fear Is the Killer
11. Land of the Setting Sun
12. A Warrior’s Song 05:00
13. Mach Opus 206
14. Get Next to You*
*…bonus track
