CHRIS CATENA – Discovery

Chris Catena is an Italian singer who has through his 20-year long career worked with a great number of legendary musicians. At this moment he has released his second solo record Discovery and the participants of this record are not just anybody. The sound of Bobby Kimball (Toto), Bruce Kulick (ex-Kiss), Timothy Drury (Whitesnake), Uriah Duffy (Whitesnake), Earl Slick, Pat Travers, Tommy Denander, and Tony Franklin paint this record alongside with the fabulous voice of Chris Catena. This is a quite interesting album with a lot of exciting music … so read on!

The album opens with the title track, which is an atmospheric keyboard intro, a very beautiful piece of music as well lasting for about 2 minutes. Then you’re tossed out in the energetic riffs of the song “Freedom Bound.” This is one of the heaviest songs on the album, but does also feature some great melodies. With this one, the first proper song on the record, Chris really show what a fantastic singer he is. At times, he sounds a little similar to Don Wolf from the Canadian Melodic Rock band White Wolf. There’s also some very outstanding guitar work on this song, which is the very highlight of this record.

The following tune, “The Chosen One,” is also a very riff-based song, and a slow rocker. This one is a nice duet with Toto singer Bobby Kimball, which really proves that he is one of the greatest voices in Rock. Kimball appears on many songs apart from this one as well — a real listening joy.

Another song that sticks out from the mass is “The Spacefreak King.” This is a very exciting song with a lot of space-like sounds beneath the catchy melodies. You can just imagine how fun it must have been to work on this tune in the studio. There are more space related songs on the record, one of the ending melodies for example “The Space.” This one is almost eight-minutes long and has a very atmospheric sound to it. It’s slow and heavy, but yet it has a lot of amusing melodies. Again, there are some outstanding guitar solos appearing. This time it is with the amazing skills of Daniel Palmqvist and Michael Gapys. The song ends very epic, actually, and in fact it would be real pleasing to have this song as the ending song too, but the song that has the honorable job of putting an end to this record is the lovely ballad “Back To Life/Coming Home.”

Discovery is a very enjoyable record and deserves a lot of positive words and credits. It’s a collection of brilliant music. It makes you drift away with its atmospheric sounds; you could actually call it a kind of “Space Rock,” because it sounds very space-related many times through the music and the lyrics. Even the artwork confirms this with pictures of aliens and very unusual graphics. The production is great too, especially the guitars and keyboards. The only thing that drags the album a bit down is that it gets a little too long with 18 songs. But, apart from that, this is a fine record. If you’re a fan of music that has a fine mixture of heavy and soft elements, weird, experimental sounds, and beautiful melodies or is just a fan of Melodic Rock in general, this would be the perfect album to purchase this year.