Title: Festival
Artist: Jon Oliva’s Pain
Genre: Progressive Metal
Release Date: 19.02.2010
Label: AFM Records
Album Review
Jon Oliva's Pain (sometimes referred to as JOP) is the latest project of former SAVATAGE co-founder and front man Jon Oliva. Associated acts are also Circle II Circle and the Trans Siberian Orchestra. After the huge worldwide tour in 2009 follows now his newest album (after the release of 2008´s ‘Global Warning’) called ‘Festival’.
From the very first moment it’s sounding typical JOP: Only true Metal with little doom and gothic influences and a lot of guitar experiments. He´s also using a huge background choir to create more massive songs. With the first song ‘Lies’ he´s working over his negative experiences he had with the people who tried to suck out as much money as they could from SAVATAGE. The song contains great guitar riffs from Chris and nice keyboard sounds, with the shouting voice from Jon. That all together makes it an absolute powerful song, which makes you feel all the anger and disappointments they had gone trough. A great intro for ‘Festival’!
The following song ‘Death Rides a Black Horse’ has also a special background. The idea comes from JO´s nephew who´s joining the army in Afghanistan. There´s a lot of guitars used and arranged weird together along with a background choir. The weird arrangement should show up the weird circumstances of a war. It´s gonna be a tough job to play that one live on stage. The lead song of the album is called ‘Festival’ and it comes up with strange guitar tunings, invented by Jon himself, who has no idea how he invented them, but just love them now. The atmosphere around the song should remind listeners of a carnival or a festival in a nightmare. A little bit of gothic influence together with classical metal makes Festival to a song which goes in your ear and never goes out again.
After the first three songs it´s pretty sure that Jon Oliva hasn´t lost his qualities in composing song, using his ideas and influences from other metal styles exactly where they fit. There´s no JOP album without a ballade and here it´s called ‘Afterglow’. A real calm, romantic song which nearly makes you fall asleep in his long instrumental passages in between. ‘Living on the Edge’ is shouting you up from sleep again and gives you back the speed and power. But ‘Looking for Nothing’ is again a ballade which is finally the unspectacular song on the album. It seems that not the ideas are fading away a bit and that the songs starting to repeat. Technical still brilliant but the individual touch of the first songs is missing. ‘The Evil Within’ has again like ‘Festival’ a bit psychedelic instrumental parts. They are so hard to follow that the song dies with it. ‘Winter Haven’ and ‘I fear you’ is easy listening and a highlight for all SAVATAGE fans until ‘Now’ is a calm finish again.
The whole album is certainly a catch for JPO fans and the song ‘Festival’ is certainly the best. The consistence of this album is good and strong in the middle but after the three songs you become the feeling of having pressed the random button. The energy is unfortunately getting lost towards the end.
Tracklist
01. Lies
02. Death Rides a Black Horse
03. Festival
04. Afterglow
05. Living on the Edge
06. Looking For Nothing
07. The Evil Within
08. Winter Haven
09. I Fear You
10. Now
Line-Up
Bass - Kevin Rothney
Vocals - Jon Oliva
Guitar - Matt LaPorte, Tom McDyne
Keys - Jon Oliva, John Zahner
Drums - Chris Kinder
Website
http://www.jonoliva.net/ / http://www.myspace.com/jonoliva
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 7
Extras: -
Total: 7.5 / 10
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