Band:
J. Koleberg – drums
Nalle Grizzly Påhlsson –bass
Chris Laney – everything else
Discography:
debut
Guests:
Vic Zino
Martin Sweet
Zinny Zan
Info:
Songwriters for "Pure" besides Laney include Bruce Kulick, Lennart Östlund, Mats Levén and others
Released: 27/3-2009
Reviewed: 7/1-2010
Links:
chrislaney.com
myspace
metalheaven
Musically we are dealing with quite straight ahead rock music with loads of melodies. There is a clean sound and production and you can hear that there is a lot of care put into the music which actually tends to remind of rock music from times past but still sounding nice and modern.
As I said the care put down into this music is clearly visible through the sounds you hear on the record. Still I don’t really feel that I enjoy this record very much, it is not that it is bad, rather the opposite. It is a good record where every tone seems carefully placed and a lot of thought is put down into but still, I don’t feel very enthusiastic about what I hear and now that this record is written away I will probably never again listen to it.
So what is missing? Well, it is that thing you cannot really put your finger on, musically it is great but the so-called X-factor is missing, not the one by Iron Maiden but that factor that makes the difference. The thing that makes you like something even though it doesn’t really have the absolute quality. One can probably call it soul or passion, that is what is missing, it sort of feels like Laney has used his mind and brain and not his heart when he created this music.
Sure there are high notes like opening Situation but in full this record feels more like some grey mass that doesn’t really grab you anywhere through, I find that I don’t even wake up and think: ”hey, this is quite nice”, every time I loose interest and start thinking about other records.
Records creating such feelings are quite hard to review in a good way but I have to write down how I see it and this record is more or less dull. Sure it is not in any way bad, Laney can create both music and produce it well but he seems to lack heart, at least in this solo album.
I read that Laney is working on writing new material for a second solo album which I think is great, he can take the great parts from this record and try to add some more soul, emotion, passion or whatever you like to call it if he does that he will release a real killer of an album. That is what I hope for now that I put Laneys promo record in the same pile as most junk I get, it sort of pains me to place it there but he just isn’t good enough with Pure.
HHHHHHH
