Izvajalec: Slamer, Mike
Založba: Frontiers Records
Izid: 2006
Ocena: 3/5
Mike Slamer, guitarist of Steelhouse Lane and Seventh Key – the hot side project of Kansas bassist Billy Greer – has been incredibly busy lately. The result is “Nowhere Land”, his solo debut.
Mike is known as an excellent producer, and on this record the instruments breathe against each other in perfect contrast, proving you can get a million-dollar production without spending a million dollars. That’s what happens when you produce your own record and you’re also a born studio “control freak” like Mike Slamer. The AOR choir-style vocal arrangements and Terry Brock’s excellent vocals weave together into a superb collage, while expressive guitar riffs sit in sharp contrast to them throughout the record. Terry Brock sounds incredibly clean in the production, and his signature, rougher tone of voice is simply missing from the album. That’s pretty shocking considering what he brings with his vocals in his bands The Sign and Strangerways. The keyboards sit nicely in the background, holding everything together and adding the bombast.
Slamer once again delivers stunning proof of what a great guitarist he is. His control of the instrument is flawless. The guy devotes his whole approach to melody. His solos are never pretentious, and Mike doesn’t throw notes around for the sake of it. At the same time he shows off his stylistic range, which convinces through classic passages as well as through bluesy rocker touches in individual songs. In the instrumental middle sections, Mike builds atmosphere slowly with sporadic layering of guitar embellishments, which turn into the artistic peak of a perfectly placed solo at those instrumental spots in the songs.
But… The album is a real “twin” of Seventh Key and Steelehouse Lane, which shows just how important a role Slamer’s guitar plays in the sound of both of those bands. At the same time, that means “Nowhere Land” as a record doesn’t surprise in the slightest. The Americanly syrupy choruses of the ballads Strenghth To Carry On and Come To Me are grating too. In places, certain tracks sound a lot like Seventh Key, and you get the feeling it’s a song that just wasn’t lucky enough to land on an album by that band. The quality is undeniable, but the originality of the album is very much deniable.
Despite the qualities “Nowhere Land” has in terms of the performance of the material and the flawless production, the similarity to those other bands simply steps into the foreground far too often. On top of that, the songs are lined up in a pattern – a faster-paced track followed by a ballad. Then somewhere in the middle of the record there are three ballad-ish tracks in a row, Jaded, Beyond the Pale and Runaway, which kills the album’s dynamics! On top of that, the punchy ballad Jaded drags uncomfortably close to the song Missy by Seventh Key in the pre-chorus transition, and then, to top it all off, turns into a typical American sugary spill through the chorus.
The start is really promising thanks to the “arena”-minded bombast of the title track. The excellent production promises a big album, which then waters down dynamically as it goes on. Audio Illusion and Higher Ground are, besides the title track, two more standout songs, marked by ultra-melodic hooks, punch, and freshness within hard rock templates – the kind of thing you’d wish there were more of on “Nowhere Land”. Fortunately, there’s a decisive closing track, which carries an enviable drama that grows especially through the multi-part AOR vocal harmonies in the chorus, and it’s a song with repeated shifting of motifs and effective turns in how it stacks up moods. So a top-notch start and finish to the album, with us swaying along to sleepier tones in between this time. In short, a “nothing to die for” album!
Lineup
Terry Brock – vocals, backing vocals
Mike Slamer – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Chet Wynd – drums, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Billy Greer – backing vocals
Production
Mike Slamer
Track list
1. Nowhere Land
2. Strength To Carry On
3. Not In Love
4. Come To Me
5. Higher Ground
6. Jaded
7. Beyond The Pale
8. Runaway
9. Audio Illusion
10. Perfect Circle
11. Superstar
Trajanje albuma: 62.12
