BLACK WORLD

TANZAN MUSIC - released 2011

This is a great album and a nice soundtrack for that commute into work when you want something that keeps you rocking along, while you are crawling along in the traffic.  Sonically if you love the European flavour of eighties hard rock from bands like Bonfire and hanker after a time when Bon Jovi were still waiting on discovering ‘Slippery’ then this is well worth tracking down.

As far as the production goes I did find this a little dense at times and some of the guitar not as upfront as I would have liked but it’s the songs that are the winners here and they shine through.  The vocals too may just be an acquired taste for some but the slightly rough, accented growl works fine for me.  

This is a great slab of melodic rock and standing 13 songs tall it’s also value for your dollar.

From opener ‘Silence’s Broken’ its fairly clear that you are in for an album of moody modern hard rock that can deliver both driving rockers and more melodic fare. ‘No More’ is certainly one of the standouts and gets both a standard and acoustic treatment and to be honest this time, stripped back to the bare bones, the rawer acoustic version just edges it for me. 

Songs like ‘As We Did Before’. And ‘Princess of time’ shows the bands softer side, and are beautifully constructed. Best of the rockers are probably ‘Silence’s broken’, ‘No more’, ‘Ephemeral light’, ‘Intoxication Of Love’ and ‘Black world’ itself.

More evidence that Italy has a great and growing rock scene.  

By Jo Rockpit