Rick Graham – “Reinvention” – Album Review
Tracklist
1. Feed The Feeling
2. The Truth
3. Training Montage
4. Ascendance of the Spheres
5. Zapp!
Feed the Feeling – Cool bass intro following the drums, guitar riff kicks in with the bass, very cool sounding riff, also can hear a keyboard present which adds a cool nostalgic 80’s effect in here. Very cool main melody here too. Great lead guitar work throughout too, Rick fires out some great pentatonic licks.
The Truth – Cool eerie intro from the keyboard, awesome guitar melodies follow this, awesome main melody. Cool breakdown with the keyboard playing bass notes, then follows into a great lead solo with the same backing. Some cool shredding in the solo too, fits well. The outro borrows the intro melody and fades out nicely.
Training Montage – This Kicks Arse!!! A cover from the great Vince DiCola from the Rocky 4 soundtrack, this is covered extremely well by the Grahams. The keyboard is bang on with the original in terms of playing and tone. The guitar lead in the main melody fits perfectly like bread on butter and creates a fantastic sounding effect to the ear. Everything about this song is perfect, they have definitely done DiCola’s work justice on this one, you can also spot there influences in tunes like this one. I hear a lot of 80’s guitar/synth influence in their tunes.
Ascendance of the Spheres – Cool clean intro melody, goes into a very 80’s keyboard melody, a nice guitar riff follows. Awesome lead work follows over that backing. Very cool riff from the keyboards kicks in after the 3 min mark, great lead solo to follow on top. Cool keyboard effects at the end, sounds like its in space! Nice Tune.
Zapp! – Nice keyboard bass intro, good harmonised guitar lead work follows. Some good shredding in this track too, again, very fitting. Cool synth/keyboard melodies in the centre of the piece, very fitting also. One particular melody in this one sounds very diminished and also very good, harmonised guitars add to the effect of this.
Overall I really enjoyed the work on this disc, the song writing is very good and the production is nice and clear. I see a lot of 80’s influences in this one, lots of keyboard/guitar combinations make a great effect, I can definitely tell the Vince DiCola track was a big influence too. Overall a great disc.
© Richard Niczyperowicz 2005
for more information, visit www.rick-graham.co.uk