Craaft
Second Honeymoon

It has been rather common with album featuring Klaus Luley lately with the rereleases of the Tokyo albums, his own album release and now comes this album where he sings for Craaft. Craaft was a german band active in the late eighties and early nineties, they released three albums and this one called Second Honeymoon was their second album and was released in 1988. Thanks to melodic rock fans of Yesterrock this album is seeing the light of day once again now and this time with three bonus tracks in form of demo songs from 1987. Of course it has been remastered and given a new life this album so what about it? is it worth being rereleased?

Well musically it is part of a very large family of melodic rock albums or AOR as they are also called. It is in comparison not as polished as some of the genre can be, a bit rawer and heavier as well and that is also correct in comparison with other things with Luley that I have heard. They are german so a solid and correct production without surprises is what we are getting, I think it is a good production and the vocals by Luley are probably the best I have heard from him I must say. This album was released as a CD in difference to many of the other releases I have been getting from Yesterrock so it was quite long to begin with, over one hour and thirteen tracks and add to that the bonus tracks and you have sixteen of them and seventy six minutes which is very much music for your money. During these minutes there is not really that much in terms of variation, the songs are rather similar, intros and lyrics may vary slightly but the tracks are not that different from one another but that can be said to be making the album coherent.

But while it does that it also makes the album seem like it lacks a hit song, or something that stands out and makes you take attention to it. And not only that, the playing time makes it one album that you are not that likely to select as at least I like albums that plays for less than an hour unless they are something really special and that is not what Second Honeymoon is, it is more like an extended AOR album with all the right ingredients and all the right things but made in such a way that I find it hard to really care about the album. It is not a bad album, just one that doesn’t appeal to me in a listening sense of the way the real hit songs are not there and those that are close are so reminiscent of other hit songs by other bands that are just that much better so a good album that is a decent listen but not really anything more than that.

Oh well, there are better things out there but as little over an hour of background it is fantastic and as I already stated it is a good album but it is a bit too german, solid but keeps to much to established rules and preconceptions that there is really nothing that makes it stand out. I am sure that there are people who really likes this but if you like me has heard thousands of AOR/melodic rock albums already it does not really have anything to offer that makes it stand out from any other band and that makes it a decent album, nothing more and nothing less.