ESOTERIC EUPHONY

Han Uil has been around in the music business for a while. He is a Dutch singer-sonwriter/guitaris and has been frontman for the band "Antares" and more recently "Seven Day Hunt". He was also involved in a grunge rock band "Vertical Reality" and altenative band "The Lounge". He started releasing solo albums in 2006, and has since released 4 solo albums. His 4th album is called "Esoteric Euphony", released in June of 2019. The album has 10 tracks that span a total run time of over 52 minutes with two of those tracks just over 7 minutes. The line-up for this album include Han Uil (vocals, guitar), Peter H. Boer (bass), Maurizio Antonini (drums), and Esther Ladiges, Caroline Joy and Kate Mitchell (all on vocals).

"Devil's Knight" starts the album off with a light weight song that is supposed to dark, but it comes across rather silly sounding, even with the high pitched female vocals that have a lot of vibrato. This hollow sounding music continues in "We are United" and "The Next Door Bully". The lyrics are not really that thought provoking, though he tries with some topics that sound like they could be current issues, but his vocals don't have a lot of emotion. The guitar work is decent enough, however, and there are some interesting synth passages in there too, but nothing really stands out.

"Runaway" is one of the longer 7 minute tracks, and has a blues style to it. But, there isn't a lot of depth or heart to the music, so it just isn't that convincing. There are some meter changes, but that doesn't save the music. It just seems like music we've all heard before, but done much better and with more conviction. "Love and Me" is boring, even when he tries to tap into his inner Mark Knopfler in the beginning.

As the album goes on, it really doesn't get much better. There is very little progressive sound to this album, it is mostly straightforward, but, other than some guitar passages here and there (usually they are cut short), there just isn't anything that interesting about this album. "The Storyteller" tried to go somewhere with it's longer introduction, but it mostly falls flat. "Give Me Fire" sounds like something this album needs, more fire. There really is nothing on this album that evokes any kind of emotion from me, as it all sounds pretty typical, and the vocals and lyrics are uninteresting. There is no real passion here either. It just stays safe throughout, but unfortunately doesn't have anything else to save it. It's not even a very good pop record. If you are to get this one, it would only be for the guitar work, but it's all stuff we have heard before, and even then it is nothing to get excited about.