Number The Brave

“You can expect a beefy rock album, freak style. I think that Cooking with Pagans finally has the sound and energy of Freak Kitchen live; the energy and rawness. It is anything but overproduced, stripped down, drums, bass and guitar. To the point.” – Mattias “IA” EklundhIt has been 5 years since Freak Kitchen graced us with a new album.  Since the release of 2009’s Land Of The Freaks, the band has toured the world – making stops in Europe, USA, and Asia along the way.  Finally the band was able to settle down in their home base of Sweden to record the long awaited follow up Cooking With Pagans.The album finds the band collaborating with Blacksad comic book creator and former Disney animator Juanjo Guarnido.  In addition to creating the amazing packaging for the album, Mr. Guarnido has created an incredible animated video to support the album release.Freak Kitchen consists of world renowned guitarist Mattias “IA” Eklundh, bassist Christer Ortefors and drummer Bjorn Fryklund, The trio offers an intense blend of progressive metal and rock, often served up with a wicked dose of humor.  RIYL Frank Zappa, Steve Vai, and Bumblefoot. 

"Blue Öyster Cult tried a new producer on Mirrors, replacing longtime mentor Sandy Pearlman with Tom Werman, a CBS staffer who had worked with Cheap Trick and Ted Nugent. The result is an album that tries to straddle pop and hard rock just as those acts did, emphasizing choral vocals (plus female backup) and a sharp, trebly sound. But this approach appeared to displease longtime metal-oriented fans without attracting new ones: "In Thee" became a minor singles-chart entry, but the album broke BÖC's string of five gold or platinum albums in a row. The real reason simply may have been that the songs weren't distinctive enough. Much of this is generic hard rock that could have been made by any one of a dozen '70s arena bands." - All Music Guide

Remastered edition with two bonus tracks."Journey's ninth new studio album found the group reduced to a trio of guitarist Neal Schon, singer Steve Perry, and keyboard player Jonathan Cain. But even without their regular rhythm section, the group was able to re-create the accessible pop/rock sound perfected on earlier albums such as Escape and Frontiers. Schon's guitar still cut through the fat keyboard chords, and Perry's fluid tenor still gave the songs an airy, melodic appeal. All of that was good for sales of two million copies and five chart singles, four of which made the Top 40 and one of which, "Be Good to Yourself," reached the Top Ten. That didn't match the seven-million-selling number one Escape, but it confirmed that Journey's music had a large audience right to the (temporary) end of its career." - All Music Guide

Raise The Curtain is the latest effort from the former Savatage mastermind.  Its quite different from the Jon Oliva's Pain project and in a surprising way.  The music has a strong 70s vibe blending elements of progressive rock, AOR, and metal.  Oliva plays all the instruments but he collaborated on the songwriting with Dan Fasciano.  From the opening roaring organ sounds you know you are in for something a bit different.  You can tell this is Jon Oliva - there are parts that will remind you a bit of Savatage but you will also think in terms of Kansas, ELP, Alice Cooper.  A mash up of styles for sure but quite well done.  A friend who heard an advance copy summed it up perfectly: "A fun album".  This is the first pressing that has one bonus track.  Grab it while we got 'em.

Second album from this post-Santana lineup is a bit more commercial than the debut but there are still progressive overtones. Neil Schon shines again.

Remastered with 4 bonus tracks."This is a brilliant album, dense in texture, full of physical and nervous energy, equally appealing to mind and body. There is a guiding intelligence which enables these five excellent, assertive musicians to work with and not against each other. The group benefits from the addition of Nicky Hopkins, the most perfect of rock pianists (although his playing is sometimes over-shadowed by the electrical sturm and drang around him, something of an occupational hazard for pianists). Ron Wood's very prominent bass provides the rhythmic background of the album, and Tony Newman's drumming is solid and wonderfully varied, especially on "Spanish Boots" and "Plynth," Rod Stewart's voice is a little high and raspy, but this is a matter of personal taste; the singing itself is emotive, displaying a good grasp of blues-rock singing technique. The rasp, in fact, is somehow appropriate; it's really the vocal equivalent of electric distortion.Beck himself, of course, is the star. His playing doesn't quite have the excellence and logic of Clapton, but his ideas are unsurpassed. Outside of Jorma of the Airplane, Beck plays the most unpredictable guitar lines in rock, yet manages to combine them with a heavy blues feeling. He is capable of enormous speed and precision, yet his technique is almost always in service to a fertile, bizarre imagination. Listen to the eastern, Arab quality of his playing on the Yardbird's "Heart Full of Soul" and "Over Under Sideways Down." Beck miraculously manages to adapt this quality to a straight blues — the most obvious case being "Let Me Love You" on Truth — a very unlikely fusion.Much is made of Beck's egotism (in concert he will interrupt a song to play, by himself, Earl Scrugg's "Beverly Hillbillies Breakdown"), but really, he has the resources to support it.Truth, the other Beck album, contained individually outstanding cuts, particularly some ingenious reworking of traditional blues, but the entire album was not so much good or bad as patchy. "Greensleeves" and "Ol' Man River" came across as fillers, and another cut was an old B-side. Beck-Ola has greater esthetic unity, but the problem of working up material still remains. The new album has only seven cuts (five of which are original) and a playing time of under thirty minutes.Beck-Ola includes two oldies, "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock". While Beck throws in a little new-fangled feedback on the latter, the original echo, sounding very campy by now, is preserved for Stewart's voice. This cut contains the strongest vocal performance of the album (Stewart's best singing altogether is on a very soulful number called "Drinking Again," which for some reason is not on the album). The Beck Group's "Jailhouse Rock" boils with all the virulence the Fifties could muster. There's a change of pace with "Girl From Mill Valley" — a lovely, wistful gospel tune written by Hopkins, which towards the end teeters unfortunately on the edge of Mancini-land. The addition of a vocal part would have made it even better.The last cut, "Rice Pudding," is teeming with ideas. There's lots of rhythmic interest and a driving, syncopated riff which is returned to regularly as if for recharging when the semi-improvisations start to wear thin. There is the same kind of mood control, even metabolic control, which the Stones displayed on cuts like "The Last Time." In the middle of the finale, the tape is cut, leaving the listener hanging unmercifully in the group's thrall until the release of the next album." - Rolling Stone