Amen - Aguilar
Tracks :- When You Need Love Tonight Why Don't You Wanna Stay I See The Blue In The Sky I'm A Man Feel The Joy Soul Man, Funky Man Lost Child Make My Day II Shine On The Magic Of K-1 Total playing time : 45:31 m:s Produced by :- Manfred Ehlert and Donald W. Richards Label : Blue Martin Records Year : 1996
Amen is a studio project consisting of Manfred Ehlert and Marc Storace, with Glenn Hughes as a special guest. I have to admit that I wasn't familiar with Manfred Ehlert's previous work until I did the review of the Glenn Hughes Greatest Hits CD a few updates ago. A track from Amen's first album appears on the CD. Marc Storace I remember from his days in Krokus.
I haven't any Krokus records and it's been quite a while since I heard any of their material. So it was rather surprising that Marc's vocals were so instantly recognisable. Comparisons ? Well, names that spring to mind are the guy from Nazareth and Bon Scott. Maybe he doesn't actually sound like either of these, but his voice has that rasping quality associated with these two.
Opener, When You Need Love Tonight, is fairly standard melodic metal. Why Don't You Wanna Stay is better. Things are slowed down for the 3rd track, I See The Blue In The Sky. It's got a bluesy feel and there's an organ chirping ( or whatever organs (of the musical variety) do) around in the background at times, which I think adds greatly to the song in a subtle manner. It's back uptempo for I'm A Man which is as uninspiring as it's title.
As you can probably tell, the first batch of songs are competent rather awe inspiring. Then Feel The Joy kicks in and I start to get excited. This is followed by Soul Man, Funky Man and I'm still impressed. Why ? The title gives it away. Things have gone all funky. In my notes I've written Dan Reed and The Distance are being the respective comparisons. With a title like Lost Child I was expecting the next song to be more slow blues. And to start with this is what we get, but just after the one minute mark the band go into turbo mode and this turns out to be the heaviest song on the album.
Marc then hands vocal duties over to Glenn Hughes for Make My Day II. Tyketto did it with Standing Alone and Jamie Kyle did it with Bed Of Roses, now Amen with Make My Day. Re-recording songs from previous albums is something musicians seem to be quite keen on. I don't mind radical rearrangements or acoustic versions of previously electrified songs, but with all these songs it's more a case of 'spot the difference'. Listen very closely to both versions of Make My Day and you might be able to detect that the new version has the synths slightly higher in the mix and it does fit in with the general sound of the album. I have to say that I prefer the original version. Of course, if I didn't have the earlier version, I'd probably be picking out this power ballad as one of the album highlights.
It's back to Marc for Shine On which picks up the pace again with another funk metal style workout. The album finishes in uptempo mode with The Magic Of K-1, which is best described as Final Countdown style keyboards and a relentless beat of the type which reminds me of Queen.
It took me a while to get into this album. At first I thought Marc's voice was too 80's metal for my tastes. But now that I've lived with it for a couple of months, I've changed my mind. This one has been a bit of a grower. If I kept a log of how often I played each album, the log would show that Aguilar (it's Spanish for eagle apparently) has been paying regular visits to my CD player. Ignoring the, IMHO, unnecessary re-recording of Make My Day, a couple of below par songs (When You Need Love Tonight and I'm A Man), stop me giving a higher rating, which most of the songs deserve. If you're into Melodic Metal, then it's worth checking out.
Rating : 7/8
