Steve Overland surely needs no introduction whatsoever, having fronted FM for so many years as well being involved with other bands such as The Ladder and Shadowman. So I was very interested indeed in hearing this, and when I discovered that Mike Slamer (City Boy, Seventh Key) and Billy Greer (Kansas, Seventh Key) were involved then I knew that this was just absolutely essential! So, I put it on, sat back, and listened to 47 minutes of great vocals with Steve showing why he really should be put on a pedestal next to Glenn Hughes. The production is also spot on, with perfect clarity and the harmonies mixed just so, but at the end I felt that somehow I had been hard done by. It isn’t exactly AOR/melodic hard rock by numbers, but it is pretty damn close. There are some fairly strong songs here and there, but they’re not doing anything dramatically new, and these are the better ones.
I am sure that anyone who is a fan of Steve or his other bands is just going to lap this up, but there is a definite lack of hooks and the feeling that this has been created to a formula for a certain set of people. I’m just not one of them.
www.escape-music.com
