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SOUL SIRKUS ‘World Play’ www.soulsirkus.com (2005)
This lot are yet another hard rock supergroup, which we seem to be getting
a lot of lately. And unlike many of em', like the iffy Brides of Destruction,
this lot have produced one hell of an album.
They fill out the triumverate of Velvet Revolver and Audioslave, doing the AOR/hard rock thing with oodles
of class and aplomb. Of course looking at the members, this is not a shock. We
have Neal Schon (Santana, Journey, HSAS, Hardline, Bad English), Marco
Mendoza (Ted Nugent and Whitesnake), Dean Castronovo (who hasn't he played
drums for?) and finally Jeff Scott Soto (Malmsteen, Humananimal, Talisman
and numerous solo stints including the vocals in the movie Rock Star) so no
slackers there.
What they have produced is an interesting mixture of all their previous bands. Much of the time, this CD reminded me of a mixture of
Hardline and HSAS, except on the track 'Coming Home' where JSS calls on his
inner Steve Perry and helps produce a great lost Journey track.
JSS vocals are closer to those of Sammy Hager (who with Michael Anthony was in the
previous version of the band called Planet US and who wrote the track
'Peephole') than they are to,say, John Waite's or Johnny Goelli. I think JSS has
finally found a band that measures up to his talents.
The tight as f*** pairing of Mendoza and Castronovo gives the band an awesome bottom end. This
band is indescribably good and one does hope they will manage to produce
some more material. It may be a wee bit early to declare this my AOR album
of the year, but I can't see anything topping this.
*****
Review by Marty Dodge
Related>> Jeff Scott Soto
Talisman
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