Once every couple of years,
Axel Rudi Pell issues a "Ballads" CD that compiles nearly every ballad that has graced his last few discs, and packages it up with a couple of brand new tracks that have appeared nowhere else before to lure the fans into purchasing the newest compilation. For ravenous fans of the axemaster, this is like a mini event that only comes around once every half a decade or so, but for the casual collector, it's the kind of disc you can skip over and instead wait for the next full length outing.
This is the third time around, and has followed the same standards set with the first "Ballads" disc. The Pell back catalogue has been raided once again, lifting
"Forever Angel" from the "Kings and Queens" cd and adding a new acoustic version,
"Sea of Evil" from that same album appears here as well.
"The Curse of the Chains" from "Shadow Zone", plus a few others from the disc,
"All the Rest of My Life",
"Heartbreaker" make their appearance, even if
"Curse" is little more than a flash in the pan intro. Even
"The Line" and
"The Temple of the Holy" are here from "The Masquerade Ball" (one of my personal Pell favs), but the biggest question rolling around in my mind is. where is
"Night and Rain"? One of the best songs he has ever created and enough of a ballad to make it onto the disc and instead it got the shaft. For shame!
The best cut is likely
"Heartbreaker" which when originally released was guaranteed to break hearts with its gentleness and Pell's soft, caressing guitar lapping away at the edges. New for the disc, is the fresh
"Don't Say Goodbye", heavily reminiscent of all the other soft stuff on here, but it's nice to have something new and completely their own for the disc, and there's also their interpretation of Rainbow's classic
"Temple of the King". A million bands have done this song so far, and I still maintain that nothing even touches upon the initial recording back in 1975 with the out of this world team of Ritchie and Ronnie, but Axel and Johnny do a decent job of recreating the classic, only it lacks the medieval magic of the original.
If you like Pell, you've heard these songs before, so in depth descriptions are not really that necessary. Just imagine the first blockbuster Gioeli sung ballad from when he was the fresh face in the
Axel Rudi Pell camp,
"Oceans of Time" and vary that a few degrees here and there, rinse and repeat over and over again. Which it is a fantastic formula, sure to pull at the heartstrings, but I think the Pell ballads play best within the context of the full album rather than run one after another on a collection like this. Surprisingly they start to run together, like cans of paint tipped over, with the colours mixing and melting into an indistinguishable goo that while is pleasant to look at perhaps, is not exactly what you expected to experience in the first place. This was not the reaction I anticipated having, but nonetheless the weaknesses - but also the strengths - of these songs seem to blare more when grouped together like this.
"Ballads III" is sure to be a unique experience for the individual listening and whether you own and have loved all the discs the songs came from or not. Since I have loved and owned, it wasn't such a revelation for me, but for others who want to stick to the lovey dove side of this modern guitar hero's catalogue, then this is for you.
Written by
Alanna Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Show all reviews by AlannaRatingsAlanna: 7/10Members: 9/10 - Average of 1 ratings.
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 | Dark Lord
Rating: 9/10
This is one of my all times favorite ballad disks and I rate it as an entity not a compila... · Read more · |
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