Eternal Infinity

What a nice title, Eternal Infinity, it makes you want to get lost in the infinite loop such a title suggests. But let's get back on Earth and see what this album is all about. Horakane is a collaboration project between Tony O'Hara (Praying Mantis) and talented guitar player Jamie Kane. The album was originaly released in Japan in 1999, and only found it's way here in 2001 (don't even start asking me why !). Well, let's get one thing clear : it took me like 5 seconds to realize that the worst thing about this album would be the production, from the first nice note of guitar, the production seemed to be 20 years in the past. The singer has an excellent voice and a great technique. Unfortunately the sound is "blurry" delivering songs that could simply kill if they were produced correctly. That's too bad, if you take the opening track Over The Edge, the song is excellent, nice sharp cut riffs, nice solos, great vocal melodies and what a chorus my friends !!! Unfortunately that's all there is to it cause the sound is so crapy that you have to really want to ear all those great attributes. I remember what my friend said to me the first time we listened to the album together : "these songs could kill !". Yes indeed, they could. It must be the first time I take out 20 points for production only (so you can imagine how poor it is), but I receive way better sounding demos and I cannot understand how this album has been released this way in 2001. That's really what I call a waste of talent. Songwise, the album is interesting, with a few excellent songs like Over The Edge, Don't Wait Until Tomorrow, End Of An Era and the excellent metal ballad Remember My Name. Strangely these 2 last songs' production are more than OK ???? Which makes me asked how and on how many different studios was the album recorded. The album also contains medium songs with some almost unbearable moments like in The Storm where the cacophony of all instruments / vocals / choirs together transformed the bridge and chorus parts into noise (again, a producer might help with such problems) ! On the bright side the artwork is nice, nice colors, and a very cool band logo. Some moments will remind me Europe or White Lion, while other would remind me Gene Simmons written Kiss' songs, with strong heavy riffs like in the song Voices which belongs into the medium songs. I believe the band maybe tries to diversify a bit too much, unable to deliver enough great songs and finally getting stuck delivering non original ones. Take Judgment Day, a song reminding me Judas or Primal Fear, but so badly/poorly done. The guitar riffs and solos are really cool, but frankly they don't succeed in saving the day, even if the album gets a lot better in the last tracks. I wouldn't say that this album could have been a diamond (far from it), but it could have been a nice Hard Rock release. But the overall is that you have a great singer and some nice riffs and solos on an overall very weak album, both in presence of good songs and terrible production. Unless you absolutely want all there is in this particular style, your money will be much better invested someplace else, hoping that their next move will be better produced (or simply produced !!!), cause I feel the talent is present, wasted, but present.