Golden Signs

Well well well I discovered Voice when I was at Wacken in 99 (they weren't playing though) through adverts and I decided to bought both their first albums during the festival (amongst countless other CDs). This new opus starts with an hymn : what an awful song !!! If you want to make the typical cliché of starting with an hymn okay, but make it a good one, cause this is not a song it's a joke ! Honestly, if I were listening to it at the CD shop I would probably stop and try something else ! After 3 albums to start with such an awful song is really a bad sign. Voice' songwriting is very limited and I believe that they need a kick in the ass to start making interesting music as this simply isn't it. I mean I prefered the previous albums and by far ! Although at the time I already thought they needed some improvements on the songwriting. So okay Voice have a very good vocalist but the overall music is really too easy and too cliché if you ask me. The main problem is that the songs miss the necessary hooks for you to remember them after you've played the CD. The keyboard player tries to sum it up by adding some weird progressive element to their music but the only result is to bring the overall down a little more. The album contains some good songs (but not really killers) that saves the overall disappointment feeling I have when I listen to it, songs like On My Way (although the breaks in this song are catastrophic), Doubtful Times or The Old Brightness. As for the production, it's crystal clear, but it even that doesn't save the day. As for the artcover it fits the album like a glove : uninteresting and weird (the booklet's nice though) ! The album contains a reworked version of Prediction, an excellent song from their first album. Nothing new here, better production, a few different things... but really is it a good idea to put a remixed version from the first album on your third album and have become the best thing on this CD... what does that tell about your current musicianship level ??? No comments ! A band that have shown great hopes in the past and who is slowly but surely taking a wrong path... too bad, I really liked their first albums. Wasted talent if you ask me... original songwriter hardly needed !