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In
2003 Brazen Abbot released after a sabbatical of six years the
excellent album ‘Guilty As Sin’ (see review ‘url’) The Bulgarian
musician who lived on an island near Finland for years, Nikolo
Kotzev is the driving force after this collective. On this album he
had been supported by three vocalists and three ex members of
Europe. Next gol of the sympathetic multi-instrumentalist was to
play live gigs. The members of Europe were too busy with the
comeback of Europe in the meantime, but they have been replaced in
an adequate way by Lars Pollack (keyboards), Wayne Banks (bass) and
Thomas Broman (drums). Amongst the vocalists Joe Lynn Turner was
willing to hit the road and that’s surely not the least of them. The
songs of Brazen Abbot were always very akin to bands like Deep
Purple and Rainbow and Joe is the perfect performer to make it all
real in a live performance.
Nikolo preferred to go on tour in his home country Bulgaria and on
this CD the concert of 31/07/2003 was recorded in Sofia. One can
find mainly songs of his latest studio release, these are played
energetic and a bit rougher. Even a drum and keyboards solo are not
missing. The bluesy ‘Guilty As Sin’, where the ‘Mistreated’ alloy
already struck me on the studio version, is divided in two parts and
also ‘Mr. Earthman’ remains one of the best tracks. To conjure
Rainbow’s spirit completely, two Rainbow songs were played this gig,
namely ‘Can’t Let You Go’ and ‘I Surrender’. As bonus track the
album ends with the acoustic ‘Love is on our Side’ (not live)
An excellent live registration which will be released as
DVD too,
this review will follow soon. |
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Nikolo Kotzev: guitar, vocals
Joe Lynn Turner: vocals, acoustic guitar
Wayne Banks: bass, vocals
Lars Pollack: keyboards, vocalsThomas
Broman: drums |
