Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Seven
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2016
Duration: 53:25
Rating: 4/5
Under the wing of Escape Music Records, British rockers Seven have kept their revival going after the comeback with the album »7«. This is a band that rose from the ruins of the South African outfit Face To Face back in 1989, moved to Great Britain with a home base in Bournemouth, and released two singles in 1990 that got people to sit up and notice. That opened the door to gigs in front of bigger crowds, sharing stages with Magnum, Little Angels, but also Richard Marx, Brother Beyond, Jason Donovan and The Monkeeys. Judging by how the story goes up to this point, it’s safe to assume the band spent the eighties building radio-friendly rock. That’s of course the home turf of the then-popular AOR genre. But the nineties were knocking at the door and nobody had an ear for that kind of music anymore. Still, in 2014 the band finally put out its first proper studio album, and in the original lineup too. Riding that success, the guys extended the collaboration and started cooking up new material. But fate had other plans: of the original members, only singer Mick Devine was left in Seven (Simon LeFevre and Keith McFarlane went back to South Africa), and for the new studio album he got help from top-notch (mostly) Scandinavian musicians. For them, AOR and melodic rock are second nature (and echo forever), since they’ve got a ton of mileage proving themselves in both genres.
A crew of excellent musicians led by producer Lars Chriss, who also stepped into the role of lead guitarist (the man already produced the album »7«), plus Fredrik Bergh (Street Talk, Rob Moratti), Andy Loos (Lion’s Share, Glory, Chris Ousey), Kay Backlund (Lion’s Share, Niva) and Jeff Paris (Mr. Big, Y&T, Vixen, Radioactive), helped Devine polish off the material he’d created with LeFevre. This refreshed tandem also chipped in a bunch of new songwriting ideas, and so took an active part in shaping the new compositions.
It’s precisely this constant immersion of the aforementioned musicians in today’s melodic rock scene, where they keep collaborating across all sorts of projects, that brings the missing ingredient to call »Shattered« an exceptionally good, high-quality album with textbook AOR/melodic rock traits, wrapped in modern, new-era production. That means, at the very least, a »mild« to more assertively pushed-forward guitar sound in the mix, which in turn generates the biggest volume in the sonic picture. But since we’re talking AOR, Mick Devine’s vocal is of course the central figure of the whole story, keeping an unbelievably high musical excellence in the lead melodies alongside a charismatic delivery. It’s the engine of highly melodic seduction that, next to the otherwise punchy guitar phrases, hooks you right on the first listen. The choruses are all carefully polished and effectively build a bombastic crescendo of swaggering moods within the songs, so the core mission of an AOR album like this is fulfilled. Instant impact. The choruses don’t wobble in quality from one to the next, and neither do the songs as a whole, so you’ll pick your own favorites.
Of course, Seven deliver music that will broadly satisfy a wider circle of AOR and melodic rock fans, a circle where we can jot down the name Foreigner. Next to (more narrowly speaking) the island phalanx of old-school bands like FM, Stangeways, Heartland, and of course with the melodic purism of the Scandinavian approach to the genre (Stret Talk).
Long story short: »Shattered« is an artistic step up from the debut »7«, in both production and arrangement. As a result it packs more bombast and more melodic catchiness. It’s an album tailor-made for every surviving fan of the »AOR and melodic rock underground« of the modern era. An album that cements the position of the newly revived band, which, let’s hope, will one day make it onto concert stages too, and above all keep hold of the creativity laid out on »Shattered«.
Seven – Fight (official video):
Lineup
Mick Devine – vocals
Lars Chriss – guitar, drums
Andy Loos – bass guitar
Fredrik Bergh – keyboards
Kay Backlund – keyboards
Production
Lars Chriss
Tracklist
01. Light Of 1000 Eyes
02. A Better Life
03. Fight
04. Shattered
05. Live This Life
06. Pieces Of You
07. Broken Dream
08. High Hopes
09. I Needed Time
10. Taking Over
11. Last Illusion
12. World Of Make Believe*
*….bonus track
