UNRULY CHILD: Big Blue World (MELODIC HARD ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

So we didn't have to wait seven years to find Unruly Child with a new album to put on our turntables. The no man's land between the two previous opuses did not therefore affect the rest of the adventures of the band to Marcie Michelle Free. "Big Blue World" is the baptismal name of this seventh baby whose progenitor is now twenty-eight years old. So, will this cherub be as unruly as his parents' name suggests?

Yanks have always worked in the great tradition of melodic hard rock bands with an AOR tendency, sometimes tinged with West Coast impulses. For them, no resolutely powerful sound, therefore, and above all, nothing fundamentally inventive except perhaps the previous album "Can't Go Home" which, moreover, was not far from making the full with his hits.

So we start this new opus with some salivations of expected pleasure. And business starts off rather well with an invigorating introduction and a "Living In Someone Else's Dream" where all the ingredients of the genre answer the call, brilliant melody, excellent arrangements and, necessarily, a chorus to be classified in the "huge" category. And then there's Patatras, the next two tracks, of which we don't remember much, freeze the atmosphere. And the Russian mountains are just beginning....

How can we go from a "Breaking The Chains", his beautiful acoustic guitar and his loans - really close - on the solo to that of "Stairway To Heaven" of whom you know to the classical, even basic, "Are These Words Enough" who boasts Toto with his outdated Hammond and his bluesy claims? All this to then throw us an uppercut with the addictive pearl "Will We Give Up Today" and prolong the shock with "Beneath A Steady Rain", a rainy ballad where the shadows of Dream Theater and Queen twirl and intermingle to the sound of a piano of magnificent sadness?

But then we stay at the Throne Fair and its roller coasters since'The Harder They Will Fall', despite its introduction given to Father Churchill with his speech of June 40 already covered by Maiden on'Aces High' - we tell ourselves that it will pulsate - does not finally make us raise the heart rate. Verdict, a flatline title, nothing happens. Just like his pursuer "Down And Dirty" which gives way to an ending that reminds us of the happiness felt at the beginning of the album with its opening title. The Hard Way' thus completes the album as well as it had begun.

Unruly Child therefore failed to maintain the infernal pace in the tube factory that generated "Can't Go Home". Big Blue World can only necessarily disappoint. However, it contains enough catchy titles to allow your summer, and its ballads elbow to the door, to play overtime. - Official website

UNRULY CHILD

BIG BLUE WORLD

FRONTIERS RECORDS

MELODIC HARD ROCK