Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Sweet & Lynch
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2015
Length: 47:33
Rating: 5/5
»Only To Rise« is, to put it bluntly, a top-shelf musical missile fired right at the start of 2015! The album came out of a project collaboration between two towering hard rock personalities of the eighties: guitar icon George Lynch (Lynch Mob, solo, ex-Dokken) and brilliant producer, composer and singer/guitarist Michael Sweet (Stryper, solo, ex-Boston). Both of them have clearly been hit by a wave of hyperactivity. Lynch is once again in full swing with his Lynch Mob, and the guys recently put out a new EP. Sweet has been an absolute workaholic for the past two years. In 2013 he released not one but two albums with Stryper, and between 2013 and 2014 he played a pile of shows around the globe with the band (hence the 2014 live Stryper album), on top of which he put out a new solo studio album in 2014, and this February he’s heading back into the studio to record the next Stryper album. And as if all that weren’t enough, he still found time for »Only to Rise«. None of this listing would be worth mentioning if the work of Lynch and Sweet weren’t backed by exceptional quality. And »Only to Rise« keeps it up! At an extremely high level of quality.
Sweet jumped at the suggestion of Frontiers Records boss Serafino Perugino, who pitched him the idea of working with Lynch and asked him to contribute lead vocals to the album. Sweet also took on the producer role and set about writing the material with George Lynch. Two seasoned players joined the two masters, both of them well known to Lynch, since they had worked with him before in Lynch Mob. The rhythm section is thus bassist James Lomenzo (ex-Megadeth, ex-White Lion, ex-Black Label Society) and drummer Brian Tichy (Steamroller, ex-Whitesnake, ex-Foreigner, ex-Billy Idol). A tried-and-tested lineup of four musicians, then, armed to the teeth with talent and priceless experience. Every single one of them contributes something outstanding. Used to the max. The album sounds like the four of them played it together live in the studio, even though they recorded it each on their own corner of the planet. The instigator of it all was Lynch, who sent Sweet guitar phrases in the form of recordings a minute to a minute and a half long. Sweet wrote lead melodies for them, glued them onto the rhythmic backbone laid down by Tichy and Lomenzo, and sent it all back to Lynch, who added guitar solos and finished the guitar work with contrasting embellishments.
»Only to Rise« is an album that’s a completely new experience for both musicians. Lynch hasn’t sounded this retro-eighties yet melodic at the same time since his Dokken days, and Sweet has never been this »bluesy«, this stripped-down hard rock, and at times even this dark. That’s the stylistic and expressive range the album moves in. If we run through the songs, we can sort them into three categories. The opener The Wish and, later on the album, Time Will Tell could fit on any Stryper album, with Michael Sweet’s arranging hand definitely dominating both. In contrast, Divine and Hero-Zero would slot easily into the current output of Lynch Mob. They’re the darkest moments on the album, hard rock weighed down with bluesy aesthetics. Some of the songs sparkle with the retro spirit of the seventies pioneers Rainbow and Whitesnake, except that an exceptional sense of melody in the lead hooks nudges them toward the AOR premise of the eighties, so the sonic and stylistic result lands somewhere in the middle. Songs like that are above all Dying Rose, Rescue Me, Recover, Strength in Numbers and September, whose opening single-string guitar phrase fleetingly, venomously tugs at the opening phrase of the Iron Maiden song Wasted Years. It’s incredible how these two musicians, each with a strictly recognizable sound in the world of music, shine at full capacity. They coexist in perfect symbiosis, without a shred of inferiority. Quite the opposite. Creatively they complement each other extremely effectively, and in how they express themselves they actually heighten each other by contrast and prop each other up.
Lynch stands out in the moments given over to the stripped-down blues hard rock aesthetic, like Dying Rose, while the guitarist becomes especially delicate, sensitive and supple with his magic touch in Love Stays, and his softness, in all its tenderness, turns particularly piercing in the moving Me Wiithout You. That very song is a peak of sorts for »Only to Rise«, because both Sweet and Lynch reach an equal optimum of songwriting and performance in it. Sweet is so fragilely tender with his vocals that the emotion he delivers literally crushes you. The song is clearly, supremely melancholic, with the mood hitting its crescendo in an exceptional chorus hook.
Speaking of melodies, you’ll have a really hard time picking favorites from this album. Sweet has once again defined the chorus hooks in a blaze of outstanding melodic clarity. The songs on the album literally steal the spotlight from one another thanks to their top-notch choruses.
Let’s not drag this out. »Only to Rise« is a unique album, a one-of-a-kind musical document that has happily fused the two outstanding musical worlds of two visionaries into a vivid musical cumulus. That cumulus holds absolutely everything the two have taken on in their careers, while the songs also pull out of them the nostalgic sentiment of the retro sound of rock pioneering, the very thing that inspired them as they grew up as teenagers. We can’t skip Tichy’s embodied drumming beastliness, or Lomenzo’s superb reconciliation of thick rumbling with making use of the available space through superbly defined melodic bass figures. The contrasts between the four building blocks of the lineup are fascinating and outstanding in the production of the sound!
All in one, in a single word! Superior! A superior achievement! Word is that the band, in this four-man lineup, is going to book shows. Let’s hope that’s true. And if it happens to be, let’s also hope the guys make it to the old European continent! As soon as possible!
Lineup
Michael Sweet – vocals, guitar
George Lynch – guitar
James Lomenzo – bass
Brian Tichy – drums
Production
Michael Sweet
Tracklist
1. The Wish
2. Like A Dying Rose
3. Love Stays
4. Time Will Tell
5. Rescue Me
6. Me Without You
7. Recover
8. Divine
9. September
10. Strength In Numbers
11. Hero-Zero
12. Only To Rise
