Review Lodgic - Nomadic Sands 2011

Tracks
1. Romance
2. Step Back
3. Lonely Man
4. Red Light
5. Rise and Fall
6. Push So Hard
7. In the Cards
8. Nomadic Sands
9. Linda Sue
10. Bringing Me Back

Band:
Mike Sherwood (Vocals, Keyboards)
William Sherwood (Vocals, Bass)
Jimmy Haun (Gitarre, Vocals)
Guy Allison (Keyboard Systems, Vocals)
Gary Starnes (Electric & Acoustic Drums)

Discography:
Debut

info:
Produced with David Paich, Tom Knox and Steve Porcaro
Mixed by Tom Fletcher and Tom Knox
Engineered by Tom Fletcher, Tom Knox and Greg Ladanyi

guests:
Lenny Castro: percussion

Released 11/11-2011
Reviewed 11/12-2011

Links:
yesterrock

This looks interesting I thought when I was moving to the portal to download the re-issue of the one and only album by the band Lodgic. AOR with influences from bands like Saga it said on the mail informing of the release, that’s great as I enjoy AOR and I adore the band Saga whom are brilliant if you discount the little less pleasant period during the mid eighties which is the period of this release mind you. And the album cover are can hardly be said to be looking good, why they did not change that now that they are for the first time releasing this album on CD is beyond any man’s comprehension and why the cover was used in the first place is also not quite logic. Anyway, this album was first released in 1985 and imagine going into the store finding that cover art on a vinyl, I would say as much a no buy as Sabotage by Black Sabbath, awful cover art but now I have said enough of that. There have been some really well known names involved in the making of this album, you’ll see them if you read in the list to the left so there would actually be quite some potential for this to be an interesting album despite it having a very ugly cover artwork and the band’s name being a spelling error.

Musically it is melodic rock with a very dominant presence of keyboards, think the style of Saga around the same era and you get the idea. For you who don’t know this I would describe it has the melodies from the keyboards are the leading edge with guitars and more traditional rock sounds being reduced to a backing state. The voice is a quite typical melodic rock voice so no surprises there and the tempo is fairly low throughout the entire album, the songs can also be said to be quite static. The production is good, not as good as Saga’s but still a very good production and it does not sound dated at all to be honest, the songs might sound a bit dated though. This album has ten tracks and it plays for little over 43 minutes.

More than anything I would say that this album sounds like something the band Saga would have done had they been heavily drugged on valium during recordings. It is slow and static, nothing really happens in the songs and despite the really good keyboards and melodies the songs just stand there confused and not aware of which direction to go in. The result is an album that does not make anything like an impression, you have the feeling while listening that it is quite good. I actually want to like it as the keyboard leads are so good that they sometimes rival the ones of Saga but the problem is just not that I keep mentioning Saga but the lack of direction as the songs don’t get anywhere and they are getting there very slowly as well. With more tempo the songs would have been better, with more direction the would also been better so they had two choices but chose neither and the album ended up being half way to nowhere and quite lost in the process. It is not bad in the regard that you hate it and want to throw up and then throw your thrown up stuff on the band but in the regard that when you have listened to it you feel like you have wasted over 40 minutes of your life on nothing. It is like playing Tetris or something like that, just a way to pass time.

So in the end I found this album to have some good stuff hidden within a complete package of absolute nothingness. There is no direction, there is not ideas, the songs are static, and everything moves at a snail’s pace, they keyboards are brilliant though but they don’t really add anything as the rest is just static, if any album should be called Status Quo this is it, or at least the songs should all be called that.

HHHHHHH

Lodgic Nomadic Sands

Lodgic
Nomadic Sands