Headrush is the latest outfit coming at you from Italy, a country that has produced not only a massive amount of classic art and architecture, but is now known in modern times as being a breeding ground for proggy power metal. Two superstars of the scene have come together here to deliver a pretty decent album that takes rock and turns it to the dark side.the progressive side. Roberto Tiranti, the golden voiced crooner from
Labyrinth and solo guitarist artist Alex De Rosso have joined forces.
The problems with
Headrush are similar to the ones that have plagued
Labyrinth. Many of these songs are practically interchangeable, the tempo is of a similar substance in many of the songs, some tunes could be identical twins but with just a few barely noticeable differences that allow you to tell them apart on first listen. For a type of hard rock, there is also a distinct lack of sing-a-long, feel good choruses, but then again this is not your average hard rock. This rock is so steeped in the swampy pits of prog that the two are forever twined in their destiny and it gives the band a unique take on the formula.
Musically overall though, this is more heavily progressive bent hard rock than metal, but don't let your guard down. Just because this doesn't barrel forward with all double bass drums blazing at high speed like
Headrush's power metal cousins, the music still packs a walloping punch, moreso than your average "hard rock" band, and thus makes it more along the lines of a more subdued, and oftentimes less melodic variant of
Labyrinth.
Some have compared this to
Dokken. Where they find the 80s band lead by a Swedish used car salesman in this is beyond me, perhaps because guitarist De Rosso was an axe slinging fill in for the band when
John Norum called it quits in the middle of a tour, but I digress. Even if the
Dokken musical link is not obvious, there is another hair band in spirit lurking around here, the
George Lynch lead Lynch Mob, which rears its early 1990s, Robert Mason fronted, head. In fact, Rob sounds quite a bit like Robert at times, with a SIMILAR? Enough swagger and velvety smoothness that its uncanny the resemblance. Like H'Rush, the Mob also incorporated a kaleidoscope of influences and flavors into their music, that help set them apart from the other big coiffed bands on the block,
Alex De Rosso has a guitar sound that fits nicely with the music. As the song will be spiralling into a dreaming netherworld, he will pull you back to cold reality with crunchy, modern touched riffing that is pretty uncompromising. His acoustic work is also impressive in its own right, and helps to keep one locked into the heart of where the band is leading you.
AOR fans have likely heard his playing before, either on the Kelly Hansen/Fabrio V.Zee Grossi "Perfect World" or
Shadows Fade featuring Kevin Chaflant.
Another note of interest is the lyrics themselves and Tyrant.ahem, Tiranti's ability to sing almost anything and make it sound halfway normal. Let's be honest here, some of the verses penned for this are absolutely abysmal, but Rob is such a good frontman he is able to drop these ludicrious lines with such expert ease that you don't even notice what kind of stupid drivel he is so emoting over until you glance at the words themselves, or even worse, realize what exactly you are singing along to.
The opener
"My World" gets everything right from the very start and becomes the template that these guys will use over and over again, so warm up to it quick, you'll be hearing a lot of stuff that is basically a change up on this formula. It opens up with a cool crisp sound, the chorus even seeming chilly but with a strange soothing warmth underneath, mostly radiating from the buttery smooth vocals. It's a lovely piece in almost every way, settling into this hypnotic tempo that isn't so soft that you think of
AOR, but yet isn't hard enough to be full blown metal either. It sits comfortably inbetween in a state that allows the song to just flow, tumble along where the tides take it, with all the peaks and lulls inbetween. It's really rather beautifully done, and also leaves a taste of regret, because as the album unfolds, it becomes apparent that they thought a little too much of this one, and decided to doom the disc by repeating this musical template til you will go quite mad.
"Not Just Anyone" follows up and doesn't do much to separate it. It gets hard, it goes soft, De Rosso tosses us a bone here and there in the form of a slamming riff or two to keep us changed up, but its really just a rehash of
"My World".
"Silence" breaks up the monotony of the material by being itself, a lovely ballad that takes me back to "Return to Heaven Denied" mixed with a bit of
Fates Warning on the side. It's included residence on the album is a welcome breath of fresh balladic air.
"Young" pulls the inner Robert Mason out of the artist formerly known as Rob Tyrant and forces it through a funnel so it comes out sounding like a Lynch Mob song when Mason was on board, with a more adventurous spirit. The chorus is heaven divine, rushed hushed verses followed by a belting Tiranti and some angelic voices raised to the winds afterwards. Overall, the song has a rough hard rock forcefulness but also winds around to moments where acoustic is prevalent and the atmosphere is overall lighter, giving it texture.
"Catch 22" is sparse and not overly complex in the lyrical department but it makes up for it with plenty of changes in the music. Most notably is the chorus that has this curious flowy feel that it endlessly loops into.
"Get off the Dime" is a notable beast for all the wrong reasons. The lyrics here are just absolutely hilariously pathetic. Rob is reduced to singing lines such as
"Get off the dime, as sour as lime" and
"You call me a bluff, tell me I'm lame, tough is the game." This is elementary school level writing, and I dare you not to laugh while reading that. I realize that English isn't their first language but someone should have spot checked that one. It's amazing that Tiranti can just tackle drivel such as that and you won't even notice what kind of nonsense is coming out of his mouth. Hooray for Rob! He saves this one.almost. By this point the album is nearly complete and you have probably moved on to bigger things by now, but those that have stuck through to now should tip their hat off to the guy for belting lines like these with conviction.
Headrush is kind of like the underground rock scene's equivalent of the Bill Murray starring movie, Groundhog Day. It's like we get one song and keep reliving it over and over again. How that song is relived however varies on how they choose to tackle it, but when you get down to the core of the matter, its still the same thing no matter how it has been spruced up. Floaty verses, big choruses, proggy overtones, the changes are not world shaking from track to track, which leads into a grinding monotony. About halfway through the album I was ready to switch the discs because even though the music is well performed and is maybe even a little too slick, the refusal to shake the foundations a bit began to result in a headache rather than a
Headrush.
Worth a look for fans of the Italian scene, followers of Tiranti, or those that want a little prog mixed in with their hard rockin' main course. Nibbled at in bits and pieces, this is quality, enjoyable stuff, but as a complete album, it is a chore to tackle in its seemingly neverending entirety. Just keep that basic rule in mind and you won't be let down.
Written by
Alanna Tuesday, July 12, 2005
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