Label: Metal Heaven
Released: 2006
Planet Alliance is a project made up of stars pulled together from several well-known, respected melodic hard rock and “power” heavy metal bands. A union of people who are, or have been, members of: Cloudscape, Last Tribe, Uriah Heep, Ozzy Osbourne, Hammerfall, The Flower Kings, Freak Kitchen, Narnia, Rob Rock, to name just a few! Among the names who’ve earned the title of legend by now, Bob Daisley stands out on this project. So how did this alliance turn out?
The main writer of the album’s material is the hyperactive Swedish multi-instrumentalist Magnus Karlsson. Just last year he wrote the music for Starbreaker and the Allen/Lande debut, and this year he worked on pieces for the solo album of Tony O’Hora (ex-The Sweet, ex-Praying Manits, currently negotiating a permanent spot as the singer in Shy). A guy, in other words, who doesn’t know what a break is. It’s not hard to guess that Karlsson drew up the basic blueprint for this project’s material, because the arrangements echo the stuff I just mentioned. Especially the keyboard arrangements and the shape of the guitar riffs.
This is an album that’s anything but instant, and it takes several spins to get to the bottom of it. It’s seasoned everywhere with virtuoso guitar solos and impressive embellishments that take your breath away with their technical polish. Above all, though, you get an intense interplay of keyboards and guitar riffs that breathes through the whole record, in a production with real depth. The sound is heavier than, say, Allen/Lande’s “The Battle”, and the tracks swing back and forth between hard rock and power metal elements, depending on what the members brought along from their home bands. The technical execution is perfect, the feel for melody is first-rate and pushed to the max in the compositions. Like I said, the production is used to the fullest and packed to the brim, and the instruments sit in a beautiful balance, with the massive guitar riffs as the backbone!
Karlsson set an exceptionally high bar with his work on earlier albums in the bands mentioned, and it’s clear that Planet Alliance will have a hard time reaching those standards, let alone topping them. You’d expect a bigger contribution from the colorful crew involved in the project, but that didn’t happen, sadly. Then again, the songs were obviously so polished from the get-go that the room to maneuver for everyone involved was pretty tight right from the start. If I dig further into the details and Mike Andersson’s (Cloudscape) vocals, I’ve got no complaints about how flawless he is, but some songs would’ve gained some lift in mood with a slightly more varied vocal. Of course you can’t just go calling up Jorn Lande or Joe Lynn Turner “for every little thing”, but adding another singer with a contrasting tone of voice next to Mike’s approach would’ve come in really handy, and the album would’ve gained in dynamics and atmosphere. The songs carry a whiff of Scandinavian gothic melancholy and are vaccinated against anything but sweet crying.
So, an album that offers nothing all that special. It’s made of solid, compact riff-driven compositions, the songs are predictable, but it’ll satisfy everyone who loves technically polished, devilishly fast solos and the colorful tricks of the classic Scandinavian school. “Project Alliance” is also a good pick for fans of Magnus Karlsson’s other work, especially the Russel Allen/Jorn Lande project “The Battle” mentioned above. The trouble with projects is simply that the members have a harder time building the right chemistry in the studio. A band breathes for the same thing, while a project needs a longer stretch of time to calibrate, and that never happens, or only rarely. So “Project Alliance” too suffers noticeably in places from a lack of “juiciness”, which matters a lot when you’re creating a convincing product that stands 100% behind what it offers.
Lineup
Mike Andersson – vocals, keyboards
Magnus Karlsson – guitar, keyboards
Mattias “IA” Eklundh – guitar
Janne Stark – guitar
Carl-Johan Grimmark – guitar
Bob Daisley – bass
Magnus Rosén – bass
Jaime Salazar – drums
Anders Johansson – drums
Production
Anders Theander
Tracklist
1. The Real You
2. Remember Me
3. Ain´t No Pleasin´ You
4. Calling My Name
5. A Taste Of Paradise
6. The Quickening
7. Divided We Stay
8. It´s Your Cross To Bear
9. The Great Unknown
10. Where To Go
11. Digging Your Own Grave
Running time: 48.27
