Music of 2020 - Part 1

For those of us who love music, and particularly live music, 2020 has been a pretty dreadful year. I have not really discussed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (or, rather, the impact of the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic) on music on this blog previously - but I think that it is safe to say that the overall effects have been devastating. For those of us who regularly attend gigs, and often travel great distances to do so, seeing the contempt for which our hobby has been treated this year is nothing short of depressing. With governments the world over falling over themselves to impose the toughest restrictions on our everyday life, live music has been treated as a pariah - with those at the top totally failing to properly address, or even acknowledge, the damage that they have done to the industry. The nadir of this attitude came in the form of a comment from Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak a few months ago that essentially implied that being a musician was no longer a viable job, and that musicians may wish to seek alternative employment or training opportunities. While there was eventually a bit of a government climbdown from this particularly offensive viewpoint, Sunak's comments nevertheless showcase what the average modern career politician thinks of anything cultural - as it is not just live music that has essentially been shutdown at the stroke of a pen. That is to say that they simply do not understand it - and have no wish to do so. As a result, those of us who love live music have spent much of 2020 feeling hopeless, but we have also been trying to do what we can to support all affected - and this fight will go on into 2021.

I, personally, however am not feeling very optimistic for the new year from a live music perspective. The continual doubling-down on failing lockdown policies is making the return of gigs look even less likely any time soon - and I even wonder if the new vaccines (the carrots that have continually been dangled in front of our faces as a light at the end of the tunnel) will alter much. After all, the government has seen how easy its power can be wielded - and the precautionary principle is now, more than ever, at the centre of all policy making. I have no doubts that gigs and the like will still be outlawed for quite some time 'for our own good' even following what seems to be a successful on-going vaccination programme - and that thought continually gets me down. One saving grace this year however has been the amount of excellent new albums that have been released. Due to the lack of gigs, I think that I have written more album reviews this year than in any other year. I still did not manage to get to everything however, so as always I would like to draw my readers' attentions to a few other releases that are worthy of your time. In this blog post, I will briefly cover five albums that, for whatever reason, I did not review throughout 2020. As always too, I will also cover my favourite live release of the year - which arguably is more important this year than ever before.

The first album I would like to cover here is the fifth album by the Finnish AOR act Brother Firetribe: Feel the Burn. The reason I did not review this one is the fact that Amazon decided to not deliver my copy until nearly two months after its September release date, but eventually it turned up! In many ways, Feel the Burn feels like a bit of a transitional album for the band. It is the band's first album released after the departure of guitarist Emppu Vuorinen, although his playing is still featured on a couple of songs here. The other songs feature a mix of new guitarist Roope Riihijärvi and One Desire's Jimmy Westerlund - who also produced and co-wrote much of the album. As a result, the more cinematic sound that One Desire exhibit has certainly permeated the Brother Firetribe sound here - which has its pros and cons. Feel the Burn is a bit of a different-sounding album for the band, but on the whole I think that the experiments pay off. It might not be quite as bombastic or as overtly-hook laden as their previous work, but the album's overall sound is lush and packed full of strong songwriting - it just takes longer to digest than the in-your-face AOR of their previous albums. While start-to-finish I do not feel that the album is as strong as much of their other work, there are some fantastic songs contained within. The trio of Night Drive, Chariot of Fire, and Rock in the City are all up there with the best songs that the band have ever written, and with a now-settled line-up I am interested to see how the band develop this new sound going forward.

Moving away from AOR and into the realms of traditional American heavy metal, another album that I have been enjoying a lot of late is the third release from New York's Hittman: Destroy All Humans. Hittman are a band that I only discovered around a month ago, but their self-titled debut album and Destroy All Humans have been on regular rotation on my iPod ever since. Anyone who loves 1980s American heavy metal is sure to love Destroy All Humans, from the razor-sharp riffing to the expressive vocals of frontman Dirk Kennedy - who sounds a little like a more restrained version of Crimson Glory's Midnight at times. He does not really go in for the high-pitched screams of the late Midnight, but his tone and control is very similar - and his performance makes the album's eight songs all very enjoyable. Occasional proggy twists, soaring choruses, and a great production make Destroy All Humans a great album - and it is one that I wish I knew about sooner. If I had picked this up back in September and had spent some more time with it, I have a feeling that it could have crept into my Albums of the Year list. It is certainly an album that I will be listening to a lot in the new year.

Last year I spent a lot of time with Eluveitie's excellent Ategnatos, and 2020 saw two of the members from the band's current line-up launch a new project in the form of Illumishade. The progressive/power metal five-piece's sound is very different from the dense folk of Eluveitie, and it allows frontwoman Fabienne Erni and guitarist Jonas Wolf to show off different sides to their songwriting. Their debut album, Eclyptic: Wake of Shadows, is an eclectic mix of sounds - but it is also very digestible. While most progressive metal albums are well over an hour long, this one is only around 40 minutes long - which means that it is an album that can be put on and enjoyed at any time. Despite this however, Eclyptic: Wake of Shadows is an album that I have not spent as much time with as I should have. I have only heard it a handful of times, but each listen gets better and better. It has a very lush sound, but there is an angular side to the band that allows modern tech-metal riffing to sit side-by-side with more traditional symphonic trappings and big choruses. Despite the short runtime, there is still a lot going on here - and it is an album that I can see myself listening to a lot more over the coming months.

Toto's 2019 hiatus lasted less than a year, as Steve Lukather and Joseph Williams have already put together a new line-up of the legendary band for a 2021 tour (hopefully). 2020 also saw the stand-alone release of Old is New, which is part-new album and part-compilation. Originally released in 2018 as part of a very expensive box set of their whole discography, Old is New is an album that saw the then-current version of the band finish off a number of old demos and release them as a new album. Three of the songs had previously been featured on the 40 Trips Around the Sun compilation album, but the rest were all newly-released songs. Being a collection of finished-off demos, the quality is somewhat variable, and I would not count it as an 'official' studio album as a result - but for Toto fans the release is essential, particularly for those who cannot afford the big box set. Old is New is worth it for the fantastic Devil's Tower alone, but when songs like Alone, Spanish Sea, and Williams' soaring Chelsea are included too then it makes the whole album worth listening to. While some of these songs were probably left on the cutting room floor for a reason, those who approach this with a similar mindset to approaching Toto XX: 1977-1997 are sure to find plenty to enjoy here.

The last new release that I would like to give a shout out to is the debut solo release from former HIM frontman Ville Valo. Released under the name VV, Gothica Fennica, Vol.1 is a three-track EP that came out with basically no fanfare back in March - but any HIM fan who has not yet heard this slender release needs to check it out. Gothica Fennica, Vol. 1 picks up exactly where HIM's final album Tears on Tape left off, and it delivers three great songs - one in each of HIM's trademark styles. Salute the Sanguine is a catchy, poppy single; Run Away from the Sun is a whimsical ballad; and Saturnine Saturnalia is a brooding, doomy track - and each song perfectly captures one of Valo's familiar songwriting styles. While the EP sounds almost no different to the sound that Valo cultivated over the years with HIM, it shows that the Finnish gothic heartthrob still has a lot to offer. Valo always was HIM, and Gothica Fennica, Vol. 1 demonstrates this. I hope that the other volumes that are sure to come out at some point are of the same quality of this little taster.

All rock and metal fans can do a lot worse than giving those five releases a listen, and it goes to show just how much great music was released this year. 2020's saving grace has certainly been its album releases, but there have also been a number of strong concert films and live albums released this year. Even some of the gigs that took place in January and February of this year have been immortalised on film - which is important in my opinion. My live release of the year however was actually recorded back in 2018, but for whatever reason it took the band two years to release it! I Am The Empire: Live from the 013 features the current line-up of the American symphonic/power metal band Kamelot doing what they do best - and it was a long-overdue release considering that it had been 14 years since the release of One Cold Winter's Night. Now three albums into the Tommy Karevik era, I Am The Empire pulls heavily from Karevik's contributions to the band's canon - with only a handful of older songs making the cut. As much as I love many of Kamelot's classics, for me the focus on the band's newer material was wise. Karevik is a great singer and songwriter, and it feels right that his contributions are fully showcased on this extensive live release. Being a specially-planned show to make the best live release possible, a number of the band's regular guest vocalists including Elize Ryd and Alissa White-Gluz add their unique talents to the songs here - but in truth it is the five-piece Kamelot that shine the most. The band will celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2021, and in many ways I Am The Empire acts a fitting tribute to the band's career - particularly the last decade or so that has seen their current line-up go from strength to strength, with founding guitarist Thomas Youngblood holding everything together perfectly.

That wraps up my additional coverage of 2020's excellent musical releases, all that is left to do is look forward to my Albums of the Year list, which will come tomorrow, and to 2021. As I only got to six gigs this year I will forego my usual Gigs of the Year rundown as it seems rather pointless, but I am looking forward to sharing with you my personal favourite releases of the year - it was as hard as ever to choose them. While 2021 is certainly promising to be no better than 2020 at the moment, one thing that is certain is that there will be another glut of great albums released next year. It is not clear yet what extend the pandemic has had on the recording of new albums, but January to March at least certainly looks to be busy. I already have a number of albums pre-ordered, but the few that I am looking forward to the most are the debut solo album from Queensrÿche's Todd La Torre Rejoice in the Suffering, the new one from Sweden's Evergrey Escape of the Phoenix, and the no-doubt dense and expansive Omega from Epica. There are a number of other albums that I am excited to hear too, and no doubt more will be announced in due course. All we can do at this stage is hope that 2021 will see the light at the end of the tunnel for this pandemic, and the political machinations that have come as a result of it, but sadly at the moment I feel that hope is rather futile. I hope to be proved wrong however!