Radio Exile
s/t

Cool cover artwork! That was the first thing that struck me, along with the hope that it was a conceptual album of an apocalyptic world where people were making their living on structures in an endless ocean. That was not really the case; it was another project with vocalist Chandler Mogel who seems to have joined together with some great musicians to form Radio Exile where Mogel along with Charlie Chav wrote the lyrics and music. The press release makes a big thing of where you can lead the names of the guys in the band and I know some of them and that they are good at what they do, though that can certainly be said about most guys who publish their own music.

This is of course melodic rock with catchy choruses and clear melodies, an excellent production and solid higher pitched vocalist, great guitarist and a good knowledge of how to make music that will appeal to a wide audience. They press all the right buttons with this album and I am sure that the internet reviewers will rate them highly and place this album amongst the few hundreds they have already named a clear top ten album of the year. It is a very solid production; the songs are varied within the confines of the style they present. I would say that if you have heard Outloud you would have a decent idea of how this album sounds.

I think this album is a bit of a riddle to me; on the one hand it is fantastic with some excellent and catchy songs. On another hand it has some of the worst songs of any melodic rock/hardrock album I have reviewed for Hallowed since we revamped the magazine in web format in 2007. So, is it good, bad or indifferent? I would not say indifferent as there are things that point me in either direction, the first song is quite poor and the following two are okay. The fourth track Feels Like Home is insanely boring and the track I alluded to earlier in this paragraph. So how would I summarize this album?

In the final analysis it falls under the average label to me, the good and the bad equal each others out. Strange thing is how a band that made Feels Like Home also made Higher Than the Sun, a track that is fantastic. The ending track is also great so if I keep those two and maybe five more of the ten I’ll have a wonderful album but as the album was made it is unfortunately one of those albums that feels that it should have been better considering the talent that hides behind the songs. It is just another one of those albums that doesn’t really do anything for me, like the majority of those albums that keeps filling my mailbox.

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