Wednesday, February 1, 2012

KEYSTONE: "Flight To Paradise"


Rating: 5/10

Label: Park Records 2011

Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

"Flight To Pardise" is the sophomore release by the U.S. soft-rock project entitled Keystone. It's the old sound of 70's poppy metal and it's definitely recorded and arranged in the old tradition of Boston, REO Speedwagon, and perhaps just a hint of Angel. Everything from opener, "Kiss and Say Goodbye", to the closing of, "Days Gone By", are sort of meant to please the U.S. mainstream rock fan of the era of approx 1976 to 1980. Yes, it's quite a dated sound and the two main characters: Patrick Kreisl (lead & rhythm guitars, bass, vocals) and Robert Berry (drums, bass, Hammond B3, keyboards, backing vocals) are both experienced musicians with their roots deeply buried into the "first original wave of AOR".

The multi-talanted Robert Berry is a well known cult figure of the soft-rock genre and Kreisl's done quite a lot of work in the past too. This alone should definitely provide a certain stamp of quality music and it's all very professional done indeed. It's hardly earth-shattering material and like I mentioned earlier, it's more suited towards the classic 'first wave' fan and if you've been brought up with the soft melodies of REO 'Heavy Metal' Speedwagon. Unfortunately, they've also decided to cover "Little Willy" by The Sweet and it's frankly just a horrible tune originally recorded by the Glam-masters during their early Chinn/Chapman era. It's overall a decent effort, but utterly safe and quite predictable to be completely honest. The two songs peformed by female guest vocalist Kira Krakovesky is a nice change of style though. Go! Kira Go!

www.myspace.com/keystonehazleton/

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