Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: April 9, 2021
Production: Aldo Lonobile
Album length: 42.45 min
Genre: Progressive Metal / Heavy Metal
Rating: 8.5/10
Sweet Oblivion is a musical project backed by the big guns at Frontiers Music Srl. Its aim is to tug at the heartstrings of Queensryche fans who just can’t “get over” the fact that the band’s golden age, which ran through the eighties and is more or less capped off by the album “Promised Land” (with Geoff Tate on vocals, of course), is never coming back.
The debut of the Sweet Oblivion project, released in June 2019, delivered a pretty neatly pulled-off record that worked on two levels. On one side, the compositions give Geoff Tate’s vocals superb support for implanting those vocal traits that constantly evoke the feeling of recreating the classic Queensryche character. On the other, as was essential, the album adds compositional ideas that had to push such a project artistically far enough away that nobody could write it off as a more-or-less successful copy of Queensryche’s originality.
The main player the label bosses entrusted with the project pulled this off very well on the first album: the brilliant DGM guitarist Simone Mularoni. You’d expect that to be enough, but the folks at Frontiers Music Srl. think otherwise. They wanted a follow-up. And they got it. With the album “Relentless”.
On the self-titled debut, the producer’s seat went to the aforementioned top-class Italian guitarist Simone Mularoni of the progressive metallers DGM, while this time it fell to his countryman, an equally talented and thoroughly well-rounded musician, Aldo Lonobile (Secret Sphere, Timo Tolkki’s Avalon, Archon Angel). That was a must, so the new record could again steer clear of any comparisons claiming it’s merely lifting from Queensryche’s eighties catalog. Like Mularoni, Lonobile is a member of a progressive metal band, and his musical philosophy is fairly similar in that respect. The arrangements follow the project’s mold, but this time it’s more of a melodic metal album with the occasional, barely noticeable prog trick. So everything is once again built on a compositional landscape that gives Geoff’s vocals plenty of room to develop vocal melodies that tease in just the right, Queensryche-esque way. The arranging is of course the kind that will feel like home to fans of the Italian take on melodic metal, which in concrete terms means backing with neoclassical elements too. What’s more, the whole thing may appeal to fans who know the work of composers behind countless metal arias and operas, like Magnus Karlsson and Timo Tolkki. Especially when it comes to the keyboard arrangements. The production is decidedly metal. Guitar phrases take up the bulk of the space in the sonic landscape.
And Geoff Tate sings like a nightingale. He shines in excellent vocal shape. When you listen to this album, you know Queensryche and Tate fit together like key and lock. Neither can recreate that magic without the other anymore. That’s what the new Queensryche albums without Tate embody, and that’s what the new Geoff Tate albums, released under the Operation Mindcrime banner, embody. The most fascinating tracks on the album are Strong Pressure, Wake Up Call, and the closing stretch with I’ll Be the One and Fly Angel Fy. These are songs that, at the crossroads, bring together the best of both musical worlds, which was exactly the goal of Frontiers Music Srl. Still, I’d advise Geoff not to try his luck singing in Italian, because it’s “funny”. The song Aria has top-notch potential. It just should’ve been sung by an Italian vocalist, or by Geoff himself in English.
“Relentless” also has some exceptionally strong moments and catchy tunes, but it’s no longer as intriguing as the debut “Sweet Oblivion”, even though the lineup shuffle on the new album is complete. Still, it’s a must-check for all the inconsolable souls who miss the golden Queensryche days. Geoff Tate and his crew of excellent Italian musical tightrope walkers have, at least partly, made up for it with the new Sweet Oblivion album “Relentless”. And they did it convincingly.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Once Again One Sin (4:56)
2. Strong Pressure (3:57)
3. Let It Be (3:46)
4. Another Change (4:06)
5. Wake Up Call (4:18)
6. Remember Me (3:55)
7. Anybody Out There (4:12)
8. Aria (4:48)
9. I’ll Be The One (4:48)
10. Fly Angel Fly (3:58)
Lineup:
Geoff Tate – vocals
Aldo Lonobile – guitar
Luigi Andreone – bass
Antonio Agate – keyboards
Michele Sanna – drums
Uh, tole je pa boleča točka zame. Sem prvoborski die-hard fan Queensryche vse od dne, ko sem na nekdanji TV Zagreb prvič slišal Queen Of The Reich. Njihovi prvi štirje albumi so preprosto fenomenalni, pa tudi Empire je še zelo dober, čeprav je že nakazoval znake pešanja. In v prvi vrsti sem fan petja velikega Geoffa, denimo živi posnetek Take Hold Of The Flame z njihove prve japonske turneje je prav mogoče najbolje odpet rock komad v zgodovini.
Ampak prav zato je zame vse, kar je sledilo po Empire, toliko večje razočaranje. Po Hear In The Now Frontier sem jih preprosto nehal kupovati, ker je bilo preboleče. Ampak ker človek gre 2x na led, sem nabavil še Operation Mindcrime II, in se še enkrat opekel.
In kolikor mi je znano, gre čudaštvo vseh teh albumov v veliki meri pripisati prav Geoffovim idejam. Zato nisem zmogel poslušati niti enega od njegovih “solo” albumov. Tu in tam sem poslušal kakšen komad, pa me ni nič navdušilo.
Za povrhu pa tudi nisem ljubitelj produkcijskih prijemov Magnusa Karlssona. Predvidljiv je bolj kot Axel Rudi Pell, že vnaprej veš, da bo zvok sproduciran v nezgrešjivi švedsko-italijanski kuhinji, kar pogosto močno omeji vokalni pečat pevcev prvokategornikov, s katerimi dela. Še posebej, ko dela s pevci, ki potrebujejo kreativni prostor.