THE GROOVEMAN'S COLLECTION

REVIEWS FROM MY VINYL COLLECTION

Day: November 12, 2021

VANDEN PLAS – Colour Temple

November 12, 2021 /

This is the first album by Germany’s finest purveyors of Prog/Metal. Before they truly found their sound on the absolutely stunning The God Thing, they were a cross between Dokken and Dream Theater with slightly more radio friendly material.

The opening to Father is seriously dramatic, with the classical instruments giving way to a crushingly heavy riff and a fantastic song. The riff to Push is pure melodic rock heaven, and it leads into another killer song with some nice guitar from Stephan Lill. This is basically the whole album: great songs with some great playing, and a killer in your face production. My favourite track is Judas, it’s a superb song with everything that I love in a rock song all squeezed into its 6.04 minutes.

This album was originally released in ’94 and still sounds great today. Another band that don’t mean a whole bunch once you leave Europe, which astounds me, but what do I know. If you love hard rock played well and with great attention to detail, this will not disappoint you.

9/10 from The Grooveman.

SIMO – Rise & Shine

November 12, 2021 /

The album that was released before this one, Let Love Show The Way, was a huge surprise for me. It totally blew me away as I loved their brand of roots blues and funk. So I was expecting big things from Rise & Shine, but with a lot of bands around at the minute, they didn’t want to repeat themselves and wanted to keep the creativity going – even if it takes away from the success they already received. This album is a lot harder to get into and it takes a lot of plays for it to dissolve into your soul.

It’s a very groovy record, and on tracks like Meditation they nail it perfectly. Such a sexy vibe, a great melody, and some very subtle guitar with nice clean tones make this one of my favourite songs by the band. The track, Shine, musically has a Stevie Wonder Higher Ground feel to it but the lyrics are very old school RnB. The final track, I Pray, at times is the heaviest sounding piece on the record, and then it’s the most thought provoking track on the album.

This is a very varied album. If you give it time I’m sure you will be rewarded with a deep listening experience that at times goes from pure psychedelia, to soulful blues and funk.

8.5/10 from The Grooveman.

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