| Comments:
Jon Oliva’s Pain is actually anyone’s pain that listens
to it. To begin, Tage Mahal is a horrible album name, and
the music does little to redeem it or make reference to it at least.
Pain consists of guitarist Matt Laporte, keyboarder John Zahner,
whom Oliva knows from the pre-production of the Savatage recording,
Sirens, drummer Chris Kinder and bassist Kevin Rothney. All four
musicians also played on Watching In Silence, the debut by ex-Savatage
vocalist Zachary Stevens’ band. The vocals of ex-Savatage
member Oliva are the worst scratchy Meatloaf-sounding mess I have
ever heard. The guitar work of Matt Laporte is decent but hard to
remember next to the terrible vocals like in “No Return.”
Sadly,
the highlights of the album are a few 20-second pieces of keyboard
intermingled into a couple of the tracks. I am not sure what kind
of music Oliva was shooting for, but he surely missed his mark.
And this is certainly not Metal, God forbid! His labels website
speaks of Oliva’s “charismatic voice,” but they
also say he has a friendly personality, which is what your sister
says when she wants to hook you up with one of her fat girlfriends.
I’m sure they aren’t listening to the same voice because
my tabby-cat scratches less in a week than Oliva’s voice in
one song. There is not one track worthy of recommending, let alone
the whole CD.
Website/band
info:
http://www.spv.de
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