Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dario Mollo`s Crossbones
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2016
Length: 46:38
Rating: 4/5
Dario Mollo is an Italian guitar virtuoso, composer and producer. His name is firmly planted on the rock map and highly respected, and he’s earned that with some seriously high-quality hard rock albums released under The Cage (where Mollo teamed up with former Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin) as well as Voodoo Hill (where he worked with another former Black Sabbath singer, Glenn Hughes). Years have passed, ideas have piled up for a new album, and to bring the new music to life Mollo of course needed a new vocalist, one who could worthily follow in the footsteps of the charismatic vocal gifts of the elusive, or at least hard-to-pin-down, Glenn Hughes and Tony Martin.
The choice of a new name is spot on, because this team-up with current Nazareth singer Carl Sentance is of course a new musical story, and not quite the same one you’d expect. But there’s a long history behind the decision to go with the name Crossbones. That was the name of Dario Mollo’s original band, the one he started his career in back in 1981.
Mollo is something like Italy’s answer to the guitar virtuosos who shaped hard rock through the seventies and eighties. Mention that and the names Randy Rhoads and Michael Schenker spring to mind right away, but what you really feel in Mollo’s playing is a staggering devotion to the figure and work of Richie Blackmore, and the compositions, following that example, like to swerve toward the pioneering sound of Deep Purple and/or Rainbow. There’s also some flirting with neoclassical compositional figures (Take Me High, the mid-eight passage in Speed), something Richie Blackmore himself began introducing into rock’n’roll long ago. The parallels with the late era of Black Sabbath (the Tony Martin years) make sense too, especially in the opening riff of Running From the Shadow. All of this was already noted back when listening to the Voodoo Hill and The Cage albums, and yet »Rock the Cradle« is a different story. The tipping point is, of course, Carl Sentance’s vocal charisma. He serves up an exceptionally clean, melodic, expressive and commanding delivery that works superbly in every register. In the mid-range he builds power and carries it up into the highs vividly and without losing a drop of energy. Even the extreme highs, so it’s no surprise he can go toe to toe with the ranges that retired vocal siren Dan McCafferty breathed into Nazareth’s unforgettable musical legacy. If nothing else wins you over sooner, Sentance will definitely sweep you away on Gates Of Time, an ultra-catchy mid-tempo epic, or rather a punchy and deeply melancholic ballad, riding on sharply jagged wings of solemnity and mystical evocation. A bomb of a track and honestly one of the highlights of this album.
Alongside Carl Sentance’s charismatic, well-honed and instantly recognizable vocal character, the main draw of this album is once again the guitar wizardry of the excellent Dario Mollo. Sure, »Rock the Cradle« doesn’t bring a musical revolution, and rides on the well-tested tradition of hard rock, but Mollo is incredibly convincing at repackaging and recycling. Just listen to the inventiveness of the lead phrases themselves, the way he dresses them up with extra guitar melodies layered on top, and the vivid, seductive soloing acrobatics inside the instrumental passages. He never runs out of dynamite in his fingers, nor of imagination and tight, expressive sparkle. Mollo is old-school hard rock. They don’t make musicians like that anymore, which is why this album carries such a strong, well-defined musical character and identity, one that credibly holds its own within this planet’s overcrowded hard rock landscape.
For all the predictability that comes with the standard hard rock songwriting template, Mollo serves up a hugely likeable, pleasing variety of lead phrases and rhythmic keys, which give life to ten expressively powerful and convincing compositions. »Rock the Cradle« is a top-quality album. Superbly packaged, skillfully written, and enriched with bombast and melancholy, plus a touch of solemnity and mystique. Hypnotically catchy melodies. An album that revives the golden days of late-eighties hard rock. Without a pinch of »American« sugar and pathos. If you’re a fan of Black Sabbath albums like »Tyr« and »Headless Cross« in particular, and of Deep Purple’s »Perfect Strangers«, you’ll definitely find a new home in »Rock the Cradle«, with its nostalgic retro sound and unbelievably convincing hard rock punch. Let’s hope Mollo keeps Sentance on board in the future. Albums like »Rock the Cradle« always deserve a follow-up, and then another, and another.
Dario Mollo’s Crossbones – Gates Of Time (official video):
Lineup
Carl Sentance – vocals
Dario Mollo – guitar
Dario Patti – bass, keyboards
Ezio Secomandi – drums
Production
Dario Mollo
Tracklist
1. Red
2. Take Me High
3. Navigation
4. Rock The Cradle
5. Gates Of Time
6. I Got This Feeling
7. In My Blood
8. Running From The Shadow
9. Speed
10. Fright
