Tag: Fallen Angel

Takara – ‘Eternity: The Best of 93-98’ (1998) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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After Takara’s third album, The label decided to release a greatest hits compilation of those first three albums. Jeff Scott Soto was no longer a member of the band…okay…he was never an “official” member of the band even though he sang on three albums with them. Now that the band needed to search for a new singer, the label wanted to release this to hold fans over until that process was done. Neal Grusky’s search for a replacement would take a little while as their follow-up album didn’t come out until 2001 with Michael James Flatters as their new singer.

This compilation had 16 tracks and was released on November 18, 1998. If you have the Japanese Edition, you get two additional acoustic tracks as well which is always a plus. However, I think you get those two acoustic tracks on every edition so it isn’t that special…although I don’t think they were ever previously released. You also get the ever cherished OBI Strip along with a booklet with lyrics in both English and Japanese. As far as a breakout between albums you get 5 tracks from the debut, ‘Eternal Faith’, 6 from the follow-up ‘Taste of Heaven’ and 5 from the final Soto album, ‘Blind in Paradise’. The songs are in chronological order and even in the same order they were on the album so not much thought was put in to sequencing for this release. But it is a money grab, so what do you expect.

“Spotlight” kicks it all off and is the first of five tracks from ‘Eternal Faith’. It sounds like you are right back in 1985 with the keyboards and heavy guitar riffs. It is Bon Jovi meets Europe. The album sounds so dated in the 80’s which is not where the music scene was going in 1993!! It has the obligatory guitar solo and Jeff’s vocals have that higher register tone which was key for 80’s rock. The biggest problem is the keyboards are high in the mix and sound like crap. They have this crisp, clink, clink sound to them which I find rather annoying. But not too much that I don’t enjoy the song…more a production note.

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My Sunday Song – “Lord of Light” by Iron Maiden

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For My Sunday Song #405, we have Harrison’s next pick of “Lord of Light” by Iron Maiden. The song is off their 2006 album, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. The song was not a single, but after listening to it, it easily could’ve been despite it’s over 7 minutes in length. The song was written by Adrian Smith, Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson. The album itself, went to #9 in the U.S. Billboard Chart and #4 in the UK and #1 in Germany and several other countries. 

The song has a very dark, disturbing view point…at least disturbing to me. Bruce Dickinson had this to say about it…

Just imagine there was a whole range of places between Heaven and Hell and that you got to pick, and that Lucifer is, in fact, the ‘lord of light’ downstairs, which is kind of what his name means. And all this stuff about the vengeful, eternal God wagging his finger and punishing you is all just a load of PR nonsense.” – Bruce Dickinson

It is an interesting viewpoint to take and one that would make you think really hard about it especially on a Sunday. The lyrics lead me to believe that is truly what the song is about as there is talk of Lucifer by name and hell and demons. If you could pick where you go, why would you ever pick hell, but I guess there are a lot of evil people out there.

The song itself, starts of slow with an acoustic guitar and it is all dark and a little eerie. Bruce, softly speaks the lyrics and it makes it quite haunting. Then the guitars come screaming followed by Bruce at full voice. He does have one of the best metal voices out there. Nicko McBrain’s drums are pounding with an electric intensity. It goes soft again, almost gentle as Bruce softens his tone again. It builds and then the explodes out with a guitar solo that will leave you holding on for fear life. It is a wild ride of riffs and shredding with a barrage of gun fire drumming. Then it is full on solo with fiery fingers flying over the frets. You are out of breath when it finally ends. A killer song even if it is something I don’t want to think about.

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Takara – ‘Eternal Faith’ (1993) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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The story of Jeff Scott Soto and Takara starts way back in 1985 when Jeff met Neal Grusky who is a founding member of Takara. They quickly became friends through their mutual love of music. Neal started Takara in 1987, but it wasn’t until November 1988 that Jeff really got involved. He agreed to help produce a set of demos for the band. When current lead sing, Mark Del Papa, couldn’t do the vocals due to drug issues, Jeff jumped in and sang on the demos as well. The demos were strictly to help the band find a lead singer. Now, where have we heard that before??? Oh yeah, Panther.

Jeff’s job was to produce and do the scratch vocals. They would bring in other singers to sing as well and Jeff would help produce and mix those. This went on for a number of years and they had done demos from 1987 to 1991. There was no intention to release these, it was strictly to get the band moving forward. Also, Jeff had never produced or mixed before so it was a trial by fire process.

Somehow, the tapes wound up with EMI/Toshiba in Japan and the label really liked them and showed interest in the band. But there was a catch…isn’t there always. They didn’t want to release an album with the other singers, they only liked Jeff’s versions and would only release it with Soto as the singer. Neal went back to his friend and Jeff being the good friend he was, agreed to let that happen as he didn’t want his friend to lose the label deal.

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