| Alliance Road To Heaven | Escape Music ESM168 |
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Two CDs have barely left my playlist in the last 6 weeks. Brother Firetribe is one of them, Alliance is the other. It is so pleasing to get an album of this quality to feature on the site. There are great albums and then there are finely crafted works of art. This is a masterpiece! That said, Road To Heaven is an album with a subtle style and not as immediate as some releases. But therein lies the beauty…the songs work their magic each additional listen to the point where every track is considered essential. The band has recorded two albums previously and I wasn't sure we'd ever get a third. The line up of Robert Berry (Solo, 3, Hush), Gary Pihl (Boston, Sammy Hagar), David Lauser (Sammy Hagar) and Alan Fitzgerald (Night Ranger, Sammy Hagar) are all busy guys, so it is so cool to see that they have made time for this band again. I listen to all these guys individually, so it is so cool to have them on record together again. And after several years apart, they have all brought their A-Game and made this the best album of the three to date. As you would expect from these guys, there isn't a note out of place on this album and the songs featured are just perfect. This is American major label classic melodic rock at its very best. Classic in that it captures the best of what the 80s were about, yet it is not dated or even obviously retro. It is just classic rock. The song Road To Heaven is a brilliant opener and one of my favourite songs of the year to date. A killer chorus that isn't over the top, yet instantly memorable nevertheless. Further feel-good rockers appear in the form of Anything Goes, Comin' Home and the awesome Remember Those Days. The band delivers moody melodic rock like no other and I Can Breathe is another perfect example. Broken Glass is another fine example, as is the Foreigner styled Walkin' Away. Ballads are also featured and the raw emotional vocal on Make A Stand is hard to ignore. The song builds into a great power ballad. To further highlight another couple of songs, the emotion powered melodic rock anthem Nothin' Else I Can Do is utterly brilliant and the guys rock out on Not Done Till It's Done, which is another piece of melodic bliss. The guys close with the fast moving Much More Innocent, which features some classic Boston style organ and great lead vocal.
Those with the first two Alliance albums will undoubtedly find a new classic here and if this is your first Alliance album, the other two are available with bonus tracks as a digipack package from Escape Music. This is the kind of music that sums up what MelodicRock.com is all about.
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18/08/08: Frank - frank@themusicsaloon.com
26/06/08: Gregg - gmcpa1@verizon.net
23/05/08: Craig Chapman - Craig@taras-secret.com
20/05/08: yul - yulog41@hotmail.com
14/05/08: Wiljan Vriens - w_vriens@hotmail.com
Rating: 97
I concur with Andrew's rating of this one. It's a fantastic record that simply oozes Melodies and heavy driving rhythms without going off the deep end like alot of the euro-Melodic rockers are currently doing.
It's fantastic stuff...check it out!
Rating: 77
Decent CD. The songs just dont grab you much. The one excecption is "walkin' Away" There are much better new realeses
out there this year. A little bland.
Rating: 99
Thanks to Jez at www.loud1.net who insisted on playing me this album - I almost shoved my visa down his throat !!!
Awesome, gorgeous, smooth as F*@", warm, AOR as AOR always should be. "Anything Goes" slipped into my top 5 songs ever on first play. How the hell did I miss their first 2 albums. This is what blokes with bad moustaches wearing dungarees should sound like !!
2008 - what a year and we've got Journey and Terry Brock yet to be released. I really don't feel 45 when I open albums like this and wind up the volume.
Thank you guys
Rating: 75
Well i had great expectations for this one since reading the big review, and again another Alliance cd that doesnt quite cut it. i think its better than the first 2 cds but, despite the people in the band theres not a lot of magic here. Theres a couple of decent songs near the end of the record.Of course theres an obvious rip off from a U2 hit in the song "nothing else i can do" and the last song sounds like it was recorded at some other time production wise, doesnt sound like it belongs. The rest of the songs either dont fully grab you or have small parts that grab you but then go in a kind of forgetable direction. 3 out of 11 songs is hardly a stellar cd
Rating: 96
This is just why i began to love this kind of music!
Didn't knew music could be good again after what i've gone through!!
But this is really brilliant, not original but everything fits and you hear the guys having fun making this record!
What andrew said about BEST TRACKS he's totally right!!!
Thanx GUYS for the great music!!!!
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