ANOTHER WORLD

Southern Empire is back after a five-year hiatus and gives us "Another World". To me their music has changed paths and is more light and fluffy than previous releases. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and some may prefer it, but I enjoy the dark and crunchy bits more. And there is not much of that on this release. The musicians are excellent, the new singer does well and there is a lot of layered vocals if that's your gig. Yet none of the music grabs me or puts a smile on my face. There are no moments that make me say, "hell yeah did you hear that?" and press rewind to hear it again. I do like the sax break (at 6:15) in "Face the Dawn", and "Butterfly" is a very catchy pop tune.

Southern Empire's third album has finally been released after years of it being pushed back when it was supposedly just a few months from release. As most know, Danny Lopresto departed the band with Shaun Holton replacing him on lead vocals. And guitarist Cam Blokland takes a step up and plays a more up front role in the songwriting and vocals.

The album kicks off with the quite proggy Reaching Out. It's a fine track, reminding me of the sound of 90s prog band Cairo at points, and has grown on me more than all the others. The epic Face the Dawn is what I feel is the best track on the album. One of the main vocal riffs is borrowed from Coldplay's Viva la Vida, but it is overall fantastic piece of music, and probably one of my top tracks of the year. Hold On to Me is Cam Blokland's sentimental ballad. The lyrics in the chorus are saccharin and unoriginal enough to hurt the song. But the tune and the music are pretty fantastic. Some better effort on the lyrics on it would have made it phenomenal. When You Return is an all right song that is tarnished by awful narration used explain what the Fermi Paradox is. There is no need to dumb down a song with a middle school explanation of a familiar topic (nor even an unfamiliar one). Moving Through Tomorrow starts off terribly with the worst lyrics on the album and a hair band-like tune. It goes through cliche after cliche, and I would be embarrassed to play it in front of anyone. The middle of the song is actually quite good and melodic, even if the music is lifted almost straight from Steven Wilson's The Pin Drop. White Shadows is the big epic, and they pull it off. It's not near the level as tracks from their previous album like Crossroads or Cries for the Lonely, but it's really superb all the way through. The closer Butterfly is pretty good.

Overall, it's a good, flawed album, but a big step back in the band's progress. Holton has good vocal ability, but it has a whiny, mid-2000s aspect to it that takes away from the melodic sound of the band. The album is mostly hurt by the lazy lyrics though. Tightening that up alone would be a big improvement for the future.

Autumn is coming soon in the northern hemisphere and here we are with the third album from the Australians SOUTHERN EMPIRE, one of the emblematic bands of the southern hemisphere! A third opus with a major change in the position of vocalist Shaun HOLTON (passed by "The Voice" in his country replacing Danny LOPRESTO), LOPRESTO nevertheless co-composing five titles out of seven.

This disc offers us the excellent like the second piece "Face the Dawn" (9/10) from the great symphonic progressive (the acoustic guitar accompanied by the violin at 3:45 is just sumptuous), to the more than mediocre "When You Return" and again I weigh my words (5/10). Big gap then and Shaun HOLTON's singing has nothing to do with it, being more than correct or even good, for me the slayer of singers who would do better to keep quiet. Let's take the pieces in random order because this is sometimes the right method to discover a work that is as complex as this "Another World" is, to say the least.

The fifth track "Moving Through Tomorrow" for example would have benefited from being shortened by a good two minutes, the final part spoiling the pleasure of the beginning (8/10) all the same. The sixth, the peplum "White Shadows" and its more than nineteen minutes, majestically introduced by the violin, the flute and the piano during its first four minutes, gets lost in useless meanders of complexity afterwards (what a shame) , making me think of more than passable SPOCKS BEARD (a band that I never got attached to), the saxophone bringing something extra to this piece? but what does the metallic guitar break do which ruins everything in the seventh minute and the jazzy digression of the fifteenth minute! (7/10) because it is necessarily complicated to compose such long suites (let's give credit to Sean TIMMS).

As you will have understood, my disappointment is more than equal to the hopes I had for SOUTHERN EMPIRE; of course a record which will not appear in my fifteen albums of 202

It has been five years since the last Southern Empire album and is the first to see a change in line-up as singer Danny Lopresto has departed to be replaced by Shaun Holton. The rest of the line-up is still Cam Blokland (electric and acoustic guitars, lead and backing vocals), Jez Martin (fretted and fretless bass), Brody Green (drums, hand percussion, and ridiculously high backing vocals (it says here)), and of course Sean Timms (keyboards, programming, lap steel guitar, backing vocals). I don't know why Lopresto left the band, but apart from two tracks which were solely written by Cam all the songs are credited to the group when Lopresto was still there, and he also provides some of the backing vocals and guitar.

It has always been incredibly difficult for any bands to get traction in this part of the world, due not to musical quality but rather the difficulty in gathering enough people to play in front of, and there being very little in the sense of a progressive scene which there is in Europe and America. I am still convinced that if Aragon had decamped to London as opposed to staying in Melbourne back in the Nineties then they would now be far more widely known, as they should be widely known by all progheads and I do wonder if that has been the same issue with Southern Empire as this album is an absolute delight from beginning to end and I am somewhat surprised not to see more reviews saying just that.

All the songs are nicely constructed with loads of depth and changes in style, and new singer Holton is a real find as he is able to hit the notes and hold them while also providing plenty of emotion. With multiple singers in the band it is no surprise there are lots of harmonies, and there are times when the prog is heavily tinged by AOR, and others where is some nice rocking guitar, and I can certainly see why this was grabbed by the Crossover team on PA as that is where I would have put them as well. There are times when we get some pop elements, as the band mix it up, and the feeling is that this is something which is highly commercial and has been somewhat sanitised in the studio but would be much heavier when played live. It is not a difficult album to listen to, and may be just too commercial and middle of the road for some, but there is nice complexity here and there which takes the edge off the sugar and the result is something I enjoyed immensely.