Label: Pure Steel Records
Production: Jonathan Merrelaar
Release date: 16.08.2019
Album length: 40.17 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 9.0 / 10
Picture are yet another great metal veteran, returning this year with a new studio release, »Wings«. The band has real staying power: they emerged at the end of the seventies and properly kicked ass through the eighties. Up until 1986, when their seventh album »Marathon« came out, Picture rode with full-on vehemence, but then, despite the great quality they carried over from album to album as they matured artistically, they stopped operating. But in the post-millennium era, the doughty Dutchmen came back and, in 2009 and 2012, delivered two excellent studio albums, only to vanish again for a solid seven years, before we finally got their (tenth overall) studio album »Wings«, ten new tracks strong.
Of the members who have survived the good and the bad throughout the career, drummer Laurens Bakker and bassist Rinus Vreugdenhil are still on board, but in the seven years between the previous album and the new one, the lineup didn’t get any younger through reshuffling, as you’d expect and as happens with old dinosaurs who need fresh blood to keep stomping along. Instead, vocalist Ronald Van Prooijen and guitarist Jan Bechtum came back. So for the new album, Picture have actually reunited the classic lineup that recorded »Picture 1«, »Heavy Metal Ears« and »Diamond Dreamer«. To the current crew they added a fifth member, Appie De Gelder, who is not just an excellent guitarist but also took care of additional keyboard arrangements on the new album, even some old-school Hammond sound, which Picture, don’t worry, by no means overdo. It only shows up in the title track, a five-minute mini epic suite, one of the most dramatic moments of the album, but at the same time one of the most pompous. On the album, it is outdone in pomp only by the seven-minute closer, the bristling, darkly menacing march Stroke.
On »Wings«, Picture sound like a dinosaur waking up from a hundred-million-year sleep. Ten tracks follow everything we know and understand under the name Picture. It sounds ancient, ossified, primal, jagged, and in every way it can, it stays true to the tradition of the good old school of metal pioneering.
At the same time, the new album boasts a great new production, which keeps up the white-hot, sharp-edged kinetics, with a great placement of the building blocks of the sonic picture and a great production of the vocals pushed to the center, where there’s no shortage of theatrical conjuring of dark feelings of the occult, doom and other principles of vampirology. Yes. Not for nothing did the nickname Dutch Saxon stick to them, and kindred ties can also be found with the old riffs of Accept. In any case, all this elementality, which these old-timers still breathe with full zeal in their mature years, has of course chemically bonded Picture with the primal sound and energy of the N.W.O.B.H.M. revival.
Prooijen retains great vocal punch. His voice has dropped a bit over the years, but it has thickened up nicely, and in most of the registers he takes on, he sounds extremely convincing, jagged and authoritative. Sure, there’s Dutch-accented English here, but that’s actually a welcome trademark of the band and far from distracting, which could easily have happened to them. If the German Scorpions could still become millionaires with their dreadful English, then in this department it can even be a double-edged sword.
There are ten tracks. Of a very, very detailed nature. They’ve clearly spent a long time polishing them. From perfect old-school riffs that grab you right away, to dynamic and fluid links into anthemic choruses, and of course enriched with that most tantalizing component: the modulations in the middle-eight passages, where the guitar duo of Bechtum / De Gelder is simply victorious. From oiled-up solos to excellent communication in three-part harmonies and other essential transitional structures, the bridges between choruses and verses. All of this is powered by the supremely supple yet slick, thickly rattling bass leg of Vreugdenhil and the still huge, explosive kinetics of the seasoned Bakker. Among the tracks, the transition into the chorus of Never Enough pulls almost identically on the transition into the chorus of We’re An American Band by the legendary Grandfunk Railroad, but it’s an unintentional resemblance that simply happened during the composing phase..
Want an old-school punch delivered with an unbelievably sparkling freshness of ideas, primal riff-driven speed, drenched in the high-octane adrenaline voltage of steelworks energy? Something created by a generation that, 40 years later, still proves that the recipe hasn’t lost that white-hot, unyielding drive, zeal, dedication and brilliant energy that instantly pulls you in and sucks you into its rattling, raging gears. »Wings« is an excellent album. An album that reaches a quality nobody even dared to think about, let alone demand from a legendary band in its mature years. Better than expected, then. But Picture are a guard of extremely experienced musicians who have never recorded a bad album in their career, and even in 2019, 40 years after forming, they by no means allowed themselves to slip up artistically. An album that is more than tailor-made for lovers of the old school, the good old days of the N.W.O.B.H.M. and everything that tears down pioneering ossification and stomps around primally.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
01. Line Of Life
02. Wings
03. Little Annie
04. Is It Real
05. Blown Away
06. No Place To Hide
07. Empty Room
08. Never Enough
09. Still Standing
10. Stroke
Lineup:
Ronald van Prooijen – vocals
Jan Bechtum – guitar, backing vocals
Appie de Gelder – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Rinus Vreugdenhil – bass guitar
Laurens “Bakkie” Bakker – drums
