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5.5/10
Summary
Point Music
Release date: November 17, 2006
User Review
( votes)German Hard Rock band Private Angel released their second album, like the predecessor The Truth, again on Point Music. Melodic Hard Rock is the field of expertise of Point Music, so that also sets the course for the six guys from Franken (for those who do not know: Franken is a region in Germany, the main city is Nuernberg, and they are famous for wine and little Bratwurst). The short bio helps a bit since they are hardly known outside their local scene, and you may be surprised to know that the band has existed since 1980. 1980? Impressive. Also, all members are quoted as Ex-“something” musicians, with only one little drawback: None of the quoted bands has a name outside the Nuernberg city limits: Wildcat, Nightline, Maggie’s Madness, Vacancy. Does anybody know these names?
The point is that with a rocking history of over 25 years, they just don’t need to show off or try to impress by creating a wildly insignificant bio, but that is part of the game. A bunch of guys on the other side of 40 will most certainly not revolutionize the music of the world, so just by letting them take you along on their journey down the 18 tracks of Selling Off Time In Wonderland, the album works.
This band has quite a lot in common with Deep Purple. Not only are several of the tracks written in the same vibe, but also the album breathes the same “I don’t care much if you think we are cool or not” attitude Purple has shown for a couple of albums now, which makes all their releases so enjoyable. Private Angel does the same: they don’t stand out in any way, but they don’t care. They just rock, audibly enjoying themselves in the process. There are no guitar extravaganzas, no speed attacks, no industrial or modern sounds; just a band that does well on German local street fairs, where the tap wagon (do you know what that is? Probably a very German thing) is adjacent to the stage and a few dozen sparse-haired family men in denim and sweaters nod their heads enjoying a Tucher beer in the last rays of the setting sun. That is where this straight, simple Rock would do best … probably spiced up with a few cover versions of known bands so the performance goes down well, and a few albums will be sold after the show next to the stage when the band and audience chat over another glass or two.
The first three songs of the album offer as much variety as one can expect in this hard musical níche, and even with a tremendously boring ballad “I’ll Be There (A Father’s Song)” following (looks like someone just became father — congratulations, but that song wasn’t necessary) listeners can easily skip to the next track and enjoy the Rockier side again. Not all the compositions are of the same quality, but at least eight tracks (“Changing Time,” “Hold On,” “I Wanna Know,” “Slave And Master,” “The Liar,” “Mountain King,” “All That I Want,” and “The Whole World Is Going Crazy”) are good enough so that the album arrives somewhere in the middle of the field. Remember, the CD has 18 tracks, and hardly any band would be able to crank out 18 top songs … so eight is quite a good number, especially if you add another four quite bearable songs to it. Okay, that leaves half a dozen songs that would have been better left off the album, where the very mellow compositions and the forced melodies just don’t fit, but in total you get your money’s worth of good AOR, with sometimes even ambitious lyrics (e.g., “Slave And Master” and “The Chamber Song”).
This album should be worth listening to if you like Deep Purple, Bonfire, Krokus, Whitesnake, Gotthart, Gary Moore, and Uriah Heep.
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