Celebrating its tenth anniversary,
'Eye Of The Storm' has been remastered and reissued along with its self titled predecessor. This thanks to Ross Valory and his manager, Mark Sandoval, who have re-released the two CDs on their own label.
Arguably, along with producer Beau Hill, Gregg Rolie, Steve Smith and Ross Valory tried hard on 1991's eponymous debut album to rebuild and further refine the successful sound of
Journey, the band they had split from in the eighties. They brought in vocalist, Kevin Chalfant, a passable Steve Perry soundalike, and guitarist Josh Ramos, clearly a Neal Schon fan.
Perry had pushed
Journey way too far in the direction of the soulful ballad on the band's (thought to be) final album '
Raised On Radio' (1986).
The Storm pushed back.
Rolie and Chalfant teamed up with talented tunesmiths Bob Marlette and Andre Pessis to write a bunch of anthemic, mid tempo AOR/melodic rock songs for the band's self titled debut. A debut that's attained near legendary status with the cognoscenti through the passing of the years.
Producer and mixer, Beau Hill, normally heavy handed, shows a remarkable lightness of touch. He applies the polish sparingly. Consequently, many of these songs sparkle and shine. But there's a generic feel to much of the album that stops it from truly standing out.
That said, three songs at the heart of the album rise well above the others.
'
You're Gonna Miss Me' and '
Call Me' characterise all that was best about the genre. Memorable melodies, ringing guitars, losing the love, chasing the dream. Music and lyrics propelled by vaulting rhythms, pulled along on a sweetly melancholic undertow.
Elsewhere, a number of songs reach out for that awesome melodic moment. Some get tantalisingly close - the urgent, driving '
You Keep Me Waiting'; the romantic, sentimental '
I've Got A Lot To Learn About Love' - but the majority find that it's just outside their grasp.
Only the
Martin Page like
'Still Loving You', solidly constructed around swaying, shuffling rhythms - the kind of song that
Foreigner would have climaxed with a gospel choir - really stands out from the crowd. It was released as a single, and stiffed. Still, this was 1991, and the smell of teen spirit was overwhelming the airwaves and the charts.
The band recorded a second album, '
Eye Of The Storm', this time with Nigel
Green and Bob Marlette at the production helm, but it took till 1996 to get a label and a release.
Cliches aside, if this album had been released ten years earlier, it would have enjoyed huge commercial success. In the grand scheme of things, it rubs shoulders with
Journey's '
Escape',
Foreigner's
'Four', Survivor's '
Vital Signs' and Strangeways' '
Native Sons'. Yet this was the middle of the nineties and melodic rock had been exiled from the mainstream.
Yet, there's nothing original here,
'Eye Of The Storm' explores no new territory and aims at no new targets.
And that's precisely why it works. These are consummate craftsmen, doing what they know best, better than anyone else could at the time. Rolie, Chalfant and Marlette have honed their songwriting skills to a cutting edge sharpness and fashioned the results into a positive, upbeat album, full of marvellous musical moments that keep popping in your face like flashbulbs. For seven consecutive tracks it outshines almost every other melodic rock album released through the previous decade's golden age. It's brimming over with songs of unerring simplicity and uncomplicated sentiment. An uninterrupted sequence of incandescent melodies and heartstopping hooks.
'Waiting For The World To Change' and
'To Have And To Hold' are achingly sentimental ballads.
'Fight For The Right' and
'Living It Up' are splendid slabs of pumping, high octane melodic rock. If you're not nodding your head or tapping your feet, check for a pulse.
Again the band reach for that awesome melodic moment, and this time, especially on songs like
'Love Isn't Easy' and
'Don't Give Up' they grasp it with ease, enjoying the moment, before letting go and moving on to the next one.
'Eye Of The Storm' is an almost unsurpassable album. It's glorious stuff, and ten years on it still packs a considerable punch.
Ratings:
The Storm - 8/10
Eye Of
The Storm - 9/10
Written by
Brian Thursday, September 14, 2006
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