HEAT

After their estimable debut album Hiraeth, I had some hopes in Lion Shepherd.

But I could never imagine the follow up of this album would be a mediocre bunch of pop-rock songs which totally fail to return the good atmosphere and clever ideas of Hiraeth.

Heat opens with On the Road Again, which starts in a very folk way with saz and Arabic percussions, but soon turns into a very standard pop-rock tune totally uninteresting. And the same can be said of Heat, which is a little more rock oriented but equally predictable. What the hell is that, Lion Shepherd!

And Code of Life... More of the same! Maybe a little more melodic and a bit slower, but also more soporific. The chorus gains a little strength, but it does not get to save the song. And sadly, When The Curtain Falls is not better, being totally convoluted in structure and mediocre in composition despite the beautiful guitars in the verses.

Dream On introduces some acoustic guitars at the beginning and some female voices like When The Curtain Falls, but the only remarkable aspect of the song is the fine guitar solo. Fail is a rockier song which automatically brings Brave New World of the previous album to mind, but it totally lacks the same power.

Storm is Coming is also hard rock at the beginning, but after that we can hear another insipid pop song with some folk elements. Nevertheless, the chorus is ok. Not like Dazed by Glory, which is lame in its integrity except the guitar solo again.

Farewell starts again slowly, with a predictable crescendo which makes this track almost indistinguishable from the rest of the record, a fact which gives a good idea of the worrying lack of ideas that this band showed in Heat. The chorus and the instrumental part both have good guitars, but at this point of the album the boredom is complete and nothing is to be saved.

But surprisingly Lion Shepherd managed to close the album with the worst track of all. Swamp Song starts in an odd way with some obscure acoustic riffs but after a fine chorus the track turns incoherently in some sort of epic track which tries to close this album in an epic way... But totally failing in the attempt, making this crescendo totally strained and artificial. Just lame!

Conclusion: Lion Shepherd failed to improve the good job they did in Hiraeth, offering ten totally uninspired pop-rock songs with some folk elements on them. And the problem is not that they are not metal or progressive anymore. The true problem is that the quality of the compositions is less than average. Is just bad, predictable and sometimes even incoherent.

I would like to recommend this album to fans of the band. I saw them live in Madrid with Riverside some years ago and I really liked their show. But I think that even the fans of the first work of the band or their live performances should avoid this album, because is not very similar in style, and miles behind in terms of quality.

Poor work, guys. I really hope you make better on your next release!

Best songs: none of them really. They are all very similar in style and equally lame.

My rating: *