Talisman is no more since Marcel Jacob passed away in 2009. The former members of Talisman wanted Marcel’s legacy to live on and as a tribute to him and all he did for Talisman, they released a 2 CD compilation called ‘Vaults’. The album features demos from every person Marcel used to record demos for songs that wound up in Talisman. It includes Jeff Scott Soto, of course, but also has demos from Matti Alfonzetti (Jagged Edge, Skin, Skintrade), Thomas Vikstrom (Candelmass, Brazen Abbot, Stormwind), Stefan Berggren (Company Of Snakes) and Goran Edman (Malmsteen, John Norum, Kharma).
As we discussed earlier, Talisman stems from when Marcel was working with John Norum and as Marcel was prepping songs for that album, he had Goran Edman record the demos. Goran was also in John Norum’s band. Norum rejected the songs, Goran was offered a gig with Yngwie Malmsteen and now Marcel was left with all these songs and no singer. That is when Jeff Scott Soto was brought into the picture. Jeff was with the band Eyes and came and did the songs with Talisman as a favor to Marcel. After the album cycle was done, he was back in Eyes.
Then shortly thereafter, Marcel ran in to an old grade school pal, Matti Alfonzetti, who would join as the singer. They wrote and put some demos together for the label. However, there was some management change at the label and they didn’t care about the success of the debut album as it wasn’t their baby so Marcel packed shop and left. They shopped the album around and after six months of nothing, Matti decided to leave and pursue other things. Marcel was not deterred and kept shopping the demo around without a singer. Finally Dino Records was interested in the band with one big catch. They wanted Jeff back on vocals. They knew about the success of their debut with Jeff and they loved that sound. That wasn’t a terrible thing for Marcel. Marcel decided to reach out to Jeff and catch up. And within 3 weeks of that call, the two were together again in the studio to record the next Talisman album.
As far as Thomas Vikstrom goes, Thomas was the keyboard player for Talisman from 1990-1992. I am assuming that during this time, Marcel was working on songs and Thomas do the vocals. These songs never appeared on any Talisman album with any other singer so not sure if they were ever used anywhere else prior to this release.
Continue reading “Talisman – ‘Vaults’ (2015) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)”
2 Loud 2 Old Music 