By: Anders

Posted: Aug 19, 2005

Ben Jackson known from Grimson Glory and Parish is now ready with his own band, Ben Jackson Group. This is the band's second album and once again do they serve emotional hard rock.

Guitar driven rock tunes leaning more towards soft and emotional ballads than hard pumped rock n' roll. There are much good guitar work, ripping riffs, great melodies and flashing leads and solos. Though the guitar sound seems a bit compressed and that keeps the solos and leads too far behind in the sound picture. It would have been more effective if there had been some more kick behind them.

The compositions are a strange blend of rock pushing forward and more mellow emotional parts, keeping the pace and momentum down. The rhythm section is tight and works as a hardboiled backbone for the music. The vocals are okay, but not that interesting and catchy. It works well in some parts, but seems a quite out of context in others. But overall a decent vocal performance.

The biggest problem this album has in my ears, are the compressed sound, that's restrains the guitars. I think some wilder and out of control guitars would have made a bigger impact. The vocal production on the album is quite big and playing on all strings, too bad the guitar doesn't. The album consists of 10 decent rock tunes, some good guitar work and a solid rhythm section. It might be worth checking out for fans of rock n' roll with an emotional twist, even though it gets a bit too stale at times.

Rating: 5/10

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