Fellow countryman Martie Peters is back with his first solo album. After 10 years of fronting the excellent Hard Rock band
Push, Martie Peters takes it a step further now pursuing a solo career. However, the players that surround Peters on this album mostly are well known ex-players of
Push. The "
MPG" album isn't an ego boost. Peters works with co-writers and especially lets guitarist Martin Slott unfold his talent. Anthony Lledo has co-written all songs and also various other musicians have been brought in to contribute - for example former
Mike Tramp outcast guitarist Rene Shades.
The album is packed with highlights and the first 7 songs are all brilliant and minor masterpieces. The groovy
The Beast Inside lays the foundation for the album
on a very positive note. The song alternates between a groovy verse and great chorus all supported by eminent guitar playing and a great solo.
Other highlights include
Number 1 with its substantial rhythm and great leads. It is among my favorites because of the amazing chorus and cool cool guitars.
The grandiose ballad
Takes Some Time starts with piano - slowly acoustic guitar and strings are added. The arrangement adds lots of emotion, since the song builds up brick by brick for the bombastic ending with an underlying cool bluesy guitar.
A World Without You is the most modern sounding song on the album. The guitar creates a great atmosphere and Martie Peters' voice sounds really good.
A World Without You is definitely a song that keeps growing. Again it has a great arrangement with both acoustic and moody emotional electric guitar. This is a very competitive rock song in comparison to all of today's fashionable bands.
The inclusion of the re-recorded
Push tracks makes
MPG a link between past and present.
Only Dreaming is amazing with its characteristic riff, which works as the leitmotif of the song. The guitar is amazing and again I cannot praise the guitar work enuff.
Heart Is An Empty Space was my favorite off the last
Push album.
Heart is An Empty Space has "hit" labeled all over it since the very melodic chorus gets the listener hooked immediately.
The only flaws on "
MPG" are that the last couple of songs don't match its predecessors, which makes the album loose a grade. Also the sound of the kick drum is very drum machine alike. When Peters rocks out on the amazing
Riot On The 5th Floor, the kick drum sounds very "plastic". When Peters opened for
Mike Tramp in Denmark he blasted out
Riot on the 5th Floor and it has an amazing drive, which partly is transferred to CD with the kick drum sound being a bit annoying. The same goes for the up-tempo
Take Me Over The Edge, where the thin sound of the kick drum makes the song loose a bit of edge.
However, still the quality remains high on the last 4 songs with the melodic
Bird On The Wire as best moment. I read that originally Peters tried to write an Enuff Z'Nuff sounding song - well it's hard to surpass the masters Vie/Znuff but Peters got away with a very cool and yet different song to spice the
MPG album. Also the ballad
Hard To Choose is cool with Peters sounding great and a immense ending with groovy drums and a nice guitar solo, which sounds like Rene Shades handling the six string.
I have been listening to this album the last month and I am very proud to be from the same country that originated this album, since this is a high quality product from Martie Peters that unquestionably will rank among the best releases of 2005. "
MPG" surely makes a very worthy album of the month for February 2005.
Written by
Michael Friday, February 4, 2005
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