If you have one (a jaded heart, that is) revitalise it with these guys!
Artiste: Jaded Heart
Nationality: German
Album: Perfect insanity
Year: 2009
Label: Frontiers
Genre: Power metal
Tracks:
Intro
Love is a killer
Fly away
Bloodstained lies
Tonight
Freedom call
One life one death
Rising
Hell just arrived
Psycho kiss
Come to the feast
Exterminated
Chronological position: Tenth album
Familiarity: Zero
Interesting factoid:
Initial impression: Very powerful, I would have said more power metal initially than AOR.
Best track(s): Fly away, Tonight, One life one death, Hell just arrived, Come to the feast
Worst track(s): None really.
Comments: Ok, well after the frankly ridiculous intro which sounds like someone's cassette got caught in their player (yeah, old reference, I know) --- but then, it's probably meant to sound like that; jarring though --- the album kicks off in high gear with
Love is a killer, and the guitars courtesy of Pete Ostros certainly are that! Powerful, upfront, snarling while vocalist Johan Fahlberg does his best to scream above them, and has a good go, but Ostros's guitar is just not giving up centre stage! Good fills on the keys too from Henning Wanner, but this is definitely a guitar-centric track, if not album, and although I originally had Jaded Heart pegged as an AOR band, I think it's fair to say they're really more power metal, at least here. The guitars scale back a little for “Fly away” to allow Fahlberg to come more to the fore and yes, he is a decent singer. Jaded Heart purists seem determined to compare him to the original singer, Michael Bormann, but I'm not at all familiar with this band so can't comment. For me, he's a good singer, maybe not a great one but certainly acceptable.
Jaded Heart certainly won't leave you jaded, but to use an Irish expression, they may leave you “jacked” (ie tired, exhausted)! They slow it down slightly with
Tonight, a big heavy cruncher on which Fahlberg really gets to exercise his powerful pipes, then they're back rocking and fret-burning again, though they pull right back on the throttle for, of all things, a ballad, in
One life one death, quite nice little acoustic number with a sort of feel of Poison about it. Good vocal harmonies, and Fahlberg gets a chance to show us how sensitive his voice can be. Of course, Ostros can't resist slipping in a few hard riffs, but the rest of the song tries to ignore this and carries on. Guitarists, I ask you!
In fairness, though, it's nice to see our man Pete can be very expressive on the guitar too, as he does with a semi-classical melody in the closing sections of
Hell just arrived; he is, however, back to shredding in
Psycho kiss, and joined by fellow shredder, UFO's Vinnie Moore for the closer. Powerful stuff: melodic but with a real kick.
Overall impression: Power metal meets AOR and gives it a good kicking!
Intention: I'm interested enough to check some of their other albums.