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After James Labrie (and many others), Russell Allen, vocalist of
Symphony X, is next in line to release a solo album. With this
album, Russell Allen shows where his roots are, namely in hard rock.
Sir Russell Allen is sometimes unrecognizable, mostly because he
yells a lot more than with Symphony X. Especially in “Blackout”, the
first and probably heaviest song of the entire CD, his singing is
very rough. In the ensuing numbers (“Unjustified”, “Voodoo Hand”,
“Angel” and “The Distance”) the music starts to become calmer and
calmer, until “Seasons Of Insanity” (which is almost as rough as
“Blackout”) shows up. The next song, “Gaia”, is the calmest number
of them all and is in fact pure progmetal. “Loosin’ You”, “Saucey
Jack” and “We will Fly” are once again plain hard rock. The last
song and at the same time the title song “Atomic Soul” sounds just
like a title song: it’s very short and the refrain is repeated a
lot. I do find it a good song, but it’s not really special compared
to the rest.
Almost the entire CD is Russell Allen: He composed and
produced it and he played most of the guitar, bass and keyboard
compositions (and he sings of course). I must say he does a very
good job (he almost doesn’t need his Symphony X friends anymore).
But a man can’t do everything alone, so he called upon a few
friends: Michael Romeo and Michael Pinella (guitar and keyboards of
Symphony X) helped him out, but Jens Johansson of Stratovarius gave
a helping hand (or even better: a helping keyboard) as well on the
title song.
On the whole this is a good hard rock album. It mostly sounds like
hard rock from a few years ago, but that doesn’t make me like it
less!
Symphony X fans will certainly like this album as well, except those
who already liked “The Oddysey” less. But you don’t have to be a
Symphony X fan to add this disc to your collection. The fans of good
old plain hard rock will love it! |
