KORAK DO SLOBODE

Volume II of the trilogy of albums penned by R. Kanjevac, under the title "One Step to Liberty", starts promising, especially when compared with the previous, absolutely disastrous deed "Daleko je sunce".

"Noć" (The Night) and "Na tvojim usnama" (On Your Lips) are decent pop-rock tunes - the former invoking U2 "With or Without You" in keyboard arrangement and the latter containing nice flute and acoustic folksy strings (tambouritza?) - while the title track is a hard rocking blues with excellent Roscam's slide guitar. Unfortunately, the remainder of the album is rather weak so only "Sloboda" (Liberty) with guest vocals by Goran Sepa (ex-KERBER, a hair metal band, fellow-townsmen of Nis) and "Pevaju jutra" (The Singing Mornings) with strong bass rhythm are sort of listenable.

The composing credits on this album were shared among Nenad Milosavljević, Bratislav Zlatković and Jean-Jacques Roscam, but they could hardly be proud of what they did. Roscam's Afro-reggae "Ljubavna pesma" (The Love Song) which sings about "love" between different races and nations is particularly horrible! Apart from the mentioned U2 "inspiration", they were obviously influenced also by the worst of BIJELO DUGME in "Kopaonik" and by enormously popular DIRE STRAITS' "Brothers in Arms" whose tune is largely copied into "Kad me pogledas" (When You Look At Me), along with a Dobro-sounding acoustic guitar. Zlatković's two short instrumentals "Uvodna" (Intro) and "Zavrsna" (Outro) wrap up the album nicely although not many gems are present in between.

All of this can reaffirm GALIJA's strong position among the most obvious plagiarists at the Yugoslav rock scene, next to BIJELO DUGME and PRLJAVO KAZALISTE. And it goes back to their debut and intake of CAMEL's "Mystic Queen".

Still, "Korak do slobode" is somewhat better than its predecessor, while production and performance are good. Hence 2 stars.

PERSONAL RATING: 1,5/5

P.A. RATING: 2/5