Songs From The Ocean Floor

Kip Winger, for those of you who don't know the man is the singer of a band once called Winger. They were playing catchy and melodic hard-rock in the vein of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard or Honeymoon's Suite. Winger made very good albums and I'm still a big fan. So it's with high expectations that I've pressed the play button of my player. Pretty quickly I understood that I would be disappointed and that this had nothing or almost to do with Winger. This solo album is pretty much different from what we've heard with Winger, even if there are some things that reminds me of the 'Pull' album. That last one had been very criticized in its time, but I always thought it was a cool album, weaker than some previous releases, but still a cool one with some very interesting things. But this "Songs From The Ocean Floor" is not a metal release at all, it's really borderline hard-rock and I prefer to think of it as a Rock album release. It's radio oriented in a way... even though I don't think Kip cares about that... Except some "atmospheric" strange kinda songs (only a couple, like song of midnight), the album is a very good, quiet Rock release, with Kip's excellent vocal and nice melodies and rhythms. The album is quite mature and there are some interesting experimentations like the arabic music touch of the intstrumental "Free". At some points there are some songs that remind me of Def Leppard (like "Crash The Wall"). Production is very good. In the end this is a pretty cool release, very quiet, but don't expect to find the Winger of the past, cause you simply won't. But Kip's voice is unique, somewhere in between of Kingdom Come's singer and Coverdale, with a touch of Joe Elliot (Def Leppard) maybe... well, in any case Kip have a great voice and it seems he's happy in making something less agressive than melodic Hard-Rock, so let him be :). I find myself appreciating this record a lot when I need to ease my mind and this one has been done for that I think... for metal breaks.