STRANGE NEW FLESH

After the relatively failure of his hard rock project Tempst , drummer Jon Hiseman decided to revive the Colosseum name again, this time with a entire new line up. And what line up! Gary Mooore on guitar, Neil Murray on bass and Don Airey on keybaords. A real dream team, except maybe for the choice of singer Mike Starrs. He also decided to go back to a more jazzy sound, but with the addition of fashionable elements of the period (i.e., out goes the blues, in comes funk and soul).

The results are very good, of course, since it almost seen impossible to go wrong with that personnel on board. And the album starts with a bang: Dark Side Of The Moog is a tremendous fusion instrumental showing off the terrific skills of all band members, specially Airey, doing his strong Keith Emerson impersonation. Excellent start for the band. Unfortunatly things go not so well when Starss steps in. The guy surely has a good voice, but not exactly fitting for the band. It seems that Hiseman decided to cash in the latest soul trends and it simply didn´t work, At the time several funk and soul acts were incorporating falsetto singing (remember the Stylistics?) to their songs and the same goes in here with less than successful results. There are simply too much vocals on the way of the songs.

On the whole I think the instrumental parts are great, with Moore delivering some of his most inspired solos. Unfortunatly most of the time the vocals spoil what could be a very fine jazz rock/fusion/funk/soul combination. All the tracks could do without it.

A very good start for this band, even if the vocals do a great harm to several parts. Hence, I can´t give this record a higher rating. 3 stars ( and barely).