Two reissues on MTM Music.
Don't you find that once the reissue is released, the mystique that surrounded the original album disappears?
It's that rarity value, that elusiveness, and yes, sentimentality and nostalgia that too often confer magical qualities onto a now unavailable album from the past.
No question, sometimes genuine classics get a reissue. The recent re-release of Waystead's debut is a case in point. But at other times, all too often, decisions are made through rose tinted glasses.
Fate's self titled debut (1985) is full of sparkle and promise.
Produced by Sven Dag (Lava) Haug, and you can tell.
Clearly modelled on US Radio rock, tracks like '
Fallen Angel' and '
Rip It Up' are more than facsimiles, they are interchangeable with any charting US melodic rock song of the times. No one would be able to tell the difference.
Lyrically banal of course, but back then nobody cared. In fact anything more cerebral would have been totally out of kilter with the music's style and substance.
'
Victory's twin guitar surge and sense of drama;
'The Devil Inside's anthemic, arena rock pretensions, and '
Downtown Toy's emphatic poppiness help them rise above the rest.
'Cruisin' For A Bruisin' was the third album, released in 1988.
It's track 4,
'Lovers' before we get to anything that doesn't sound like it just came off the end of a conveyor belt, and even then it's not especially original. But it this track, above all others on this album perfectly captures the essence of eighties'
AOR. Urgent keyboards, a driving beat and a well crafted hook gets it there.
Elsewhere and too often, tracks like
'Dead Boy, Cold Meat' and '
Babe You Got A Friend' sound positively lame and predictable, full of ham fisted sentiments, like third rate copies of charting US
AOR bands.
'Lock You Up' and '
Love On The Rox' ( a re-recording from the debut) are the pick of the remaining tracks, with both having a rather anodyne, brassily confident
FM radio sheen. Competent if colourless.
It suddenly looked like the band's star had quickly, suddenly gone into the descendent.
Two years later,
'Scratch N'Sniff' rectified that, bigtime. But that's another story.
Ratings:
S/T:6/10
CFAB:5/10
Written by
Brian Sunday, July 29, 2007
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