BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION: Bcciv (HARD ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

The announcement of the end of Black Country Communion in 2013 had left orphaned many fans of the classy and jubilant hard-rock combo led by Glenn Hughes and Joe Bonamassa. During these four years the tension subsided, things calmed down and each musician continued his respective activities. The lack gradually settled down to the point that Joe Bonamassa proposed to Glenn Hughes to take over the business at the end of 2016. It is with undisguised pleasure that we find the quartet for a "BCCIV" with a suggestive cover showing a blazing phoenix in full ascent.

"BCCIV" is a fresh start for Black Country Communion. Eleven days for eleven tracks, an intact freshness and an energy that was just waiting to blossom were captured in Glenn Hughes' Magic Room. And it starts with two successive hits, 'Collide' and 'Over My Head', two pure melodic hard-rock songs with sharp riffs and memorable choruses. Glenn Hughes conveys the message that, despite his advanced sixties, he is still the most beautiful voice of today's melodic hard-rock (what modulations in the lead voice on 'Over My Head'!) and Joe Bonamassa shows that he hasn't yet exhausted his stock of riffs (where does he get an idea like 'Awake'?) and devastating solos. The rest of the band is impeccable in this exercise even if the general tendency of the album privileges the guitars rather than Sherinian's keyboards (very beautiful presence nevertheless on 'Wanderlust', which sounds like a good old Toto).

This kind of very powerful and efficient tracks spice up the whole album through the groovy 'The Crow', the 70's tonalities of 'Sway' and the stunning 'Awake'. Between these moments of pure rock vitality, some titles offers even more flavorful musical material. Hughes and Bonamassa have become masters in the art of composing evolving and protean pieces that take the time to aggregate a multitude of melodic elements and redeploy them in majestic climbs of intensity. "BCCIV" contains a lot of these finely arranged (the violins and mandolin of 'The Last Song For My Resting Place') and harmonically demanding pieces which all have in common an epic dimension and a strong emotional charge. There is a Celtic hue in the mid-tempo 'The Last Song For My Resting Place', one of the highlights of the album, perfectly sung by Joe Bonamassa, 'Love Remains' in which Glenn evokes his father who died in 2016, the languid blues of 'The Cove' and its irresistible rise or the power ballad finale 'When The Morning Comes' magnified by the piano and acoustic guitar.

"BCCIV" channels all the creative material of the Hughes-Bonamassa pair accumulated during the band's four years of sleep. And in the case of Glenn Hughes, who had to deal with the death of his two parents nine months apart, "BCCIV" feeds off an immeasurable rage for life that is evident in every second of this magnificent album. Hughes and Bonamassa have been touched by the divine in composing a record that synthesizes all their creative genius. "BCCIV" is a monument of melodic hard-rock and without a doubt the best album, in balance, diversity and emotion, in Black Country Communion's career. - Official website

BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION

BCCIV

MASCOT LABEL GROUP

HARD ROCK