bangalore choir cadence

Released: 27 September 2010 Label: AOR Heaven

Bangalore Choir actually made a brief appearance way back in 1991, with their debut 80s sounding hair metal release On Target. They then chose to defy convention and opted for an almost twenty-year-long hiatus before releasing their follow up!

So having matured with age, it seems that they have musically grown too, as it's not all just pomp and hair this time around, there are chunky riffs, blues solos and compositional maturity to boot – but thankfully there's also the dumbly obvious lyrics to ensure that it never strays too far from being a by-the-numbers AOR release.

A wacky intro gives way to a groove laden first track Power Trippin with a catchy chorus and an ascending chugging verse riff that invites an involuntary head-nod or foot-tap. A moody, bluesy solo whirls around amongst the percussive background riffs and even goes into shred territory at the arrival of a key change.

Martyr is a softer tune, but bolstered by an epic chorus, and an expansive vocabulary of lead breaks.

Despite the obvious decency of the musicianship on show throughout Cadence, the lame rhyming of the lyrics occasionaly lets the side down somewhat. Tomorrow ticks all the boxes of appalling clichéd lyrical content, that dreadful "tomorrow / yesterday" dichotomy, and even uses the hackneyed phrase "A boulevard of broken dreams" which almost had me gagging. At one point during the chorus though, the vocalists honed rock tones morph into strangled chicken squawks, which I always find takes the shine off proceedings.

Thankfully the best song on the album Heart Attack & Vine extinguishes the memory of it. Great swaggering blues rock riffs, with nifty lead and outro breaks. In fact the guitar work throughout is very cool, refrained and mature, with passages that fit the songs they inhabit, and only throwing in shredding runs of too many notes at choice moments to enhance the track, rather than just to show off how fast they can play.

Ballads are present in the form of the schmaltzy Still Have a Song to Sing and Dig Deep, but of course amidst the mire of drum rolls, key changes and anguished vocals, there are some easy on the ear choruses and tasty blues guitar solos.

A great middle third saves the somewhat lacklustre Living Your Dreams Every Day with some groovy riffs and a stellar solo over some pure AC / DC chord phrases.

Overall, Cadence is a solid, if somewhat belated (!) second album. The songs are quite memorable but safe riff-based affairs that don't even try to defy expectations, and David Reece has that classic rock vocalist style that harks back to the likes of blues-influenced crooners like David Coverdale and Paul Rodgers, so even if you've never heard a note by them before, Bangalore Choir are the audio equivalent of relaxing into a comfortably reassuring pair of 80s rock influenced slippers.

by Steven Hargraves