Catch Up Review / As a fan of British classic hard rock group Thunder since their debut album way back in 1990, this for me has to be the least played album of their catalogue since 1999’s Giving the Game Away.
But is that because of the quality of this record or the sheer girth of releases consumers have been flooded with this year?
I think a little of both. True enough that I hadn’t given this the time it deserved due to so many other releases demanding my time, but I also failed to connect with the album on the first few listens, so it got pushed aside at the time of its release.
Now revisiting it over the last few weeks I can see the good and not so good of it pretty clearly.
Basically I’m still not connecting with some of the tunes and find myself skipping to my favourites.
I’m not convinced the guys have got the flow of the album right either. I find the storming second track The Thing I Want superior to the mid-tempo beat of the title track and then the mainly acoustic The Rain kills the momentum completely.
It’s not until the bluesy The Prophet and the semi-acoustic Resurrection Day that I get truly interested again, but that’s lost the minute the plodding Chasing Shadows kicks in.
Broken is a pretty good Thunder ballad.
Too much emphasis on bluesy mid-tempo tunes, which is pretty much my least favourite style when it comes to bands like Thunder. Overall I think the songs that just aren’t strong enough this time around. But that’s me comparing this to the band’s overall classic catalogue – a raft of albums any band would be proud of.
I’ll hope for another album in the not too distant future.
