THE DEAFENING SILENCE

Abel Ganz is a band that has always been struggling hard with identity crises. This seems to have been going on throughout their whole career as all of their five studio releases to date have been so different from each other that they could just as well have been done by five different bands! And to a certain extent they were, as members have been coming and going a bit over the years. Even the band's two best albums, 1988's The Dangers Of Strangers and 2008's Shooting Albatross, have very little to do with each other stylistically, which is perhaps not that surprising given the 20 year period between the two. Released in between these albums, The Deafening Silence is also radically different once again, this time for the worst!

In some of my previous reviews of this band's releases I have complained that they have very often sounded anonymous and lacking in identity. The deafening silence is not an exception. The vocalist they found here, Christopher Forsyth, is not really my cup of tea. He reminds me of Joe Lynn Turner! And the compositions here are themselves actually closer to Joe Lynn Turner-era Rainbow and Deep Purple (these bands worst periods) than to Abel Ganz' own previous output! The Deafening Silence is more of a straight ahead (Hard) Rock/AOR record with hardly a trace of Prog in any shape or form. The exception is the eight minute Serendipity that is a Genesis' The Lamb-like song. Not very exciting, though. The melodies are again average at best and the lyrics are banal and consistently unexciting. There are even some downright embarrassing moments to be found here. The bluesy (yes, that's right!) title track is one of them and the cheesy power ballad Stranger In My Heart is another. I don't quite know what they were thinking here.

Looking back at Abel Ganz' entire output makes me feel that they were always a decade behind their own time. I can easily imagine their 1984 debut having been released in 1974, 1988's The Dangers Of Strangers in 1978 and 2008's Shooting Albatross in 1998, and so on. I'm not so sure it would have helped the band's popularity in general though, and the present album in particular does not deserve any appreciation regardless of time! It is remarkable that Abel Ganz returned in 2008 with such a strong album as Shooting Albatross.

The Deafening Silence is only for completionists

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