GENERATIONS

Journey album from XXI century. Neal Scon is still there and plays some stereotypic AOR guitar. Another vocalis Steve Augery is competent and trying to be close to original. All the music is usual melodic AOR and you heavily will find differences from band's long AOR history.

No experiments, no changes, nothing that can attract attention. From the good side is still quite energetic and melodic pop-rock, and you can't feel how old they are.

Don't know, what for this album was recorded (ok, everyone needs some money to pay bills), but in the beginning of XXI century it hardly will attract someone.

This has been quite a ride for "Journey". Some thirty years after their excellent debut (and still unmatched) album. The way was paved with very good albums (the first three) and an awful lot of poor and totally AOR ones.

This "Generations" opens on a decent rocker which is very much "U2" oriented ("In The Name Of Love" came straight to my mind while I was listening to this song). But I prefer to listen to such a rock tune than most of their songs for the last thirty years.

The rock feel is very much present throughout the album. Not that all these songs are great, but at least they are melodic and, here and there, one can enjoy the excellent guitar work for the genius.

These characteristics apply to most of the songs from this album. "Believe" is another example to only name it, on the heavy side though. For sure, the relation with prog is not quite perceptible and one should consider this album as a pure rock streaming performance (with an AOR tendency for sure).

Another good song from this album (after the opening one) is "Out Of Harm's Way". Very much Led Zep oriented (maybe it is the reason why it is my fave in here). Some sort of "Achilles Last Stand" clone. Superb beat, great guitar, decent vocals: the highlight as far as I'm concerned.

Same sort of comments about the speedy hard rocking "In Self-Defense". Another winner for sure. Again, Neal is particularly neat in this performance. He was too much on the background for many, many years and it is a pleasure to hear him like this again.

The travel into some giants of rock music goes on with the very much Purple oriented "Better Together" (Mark III era). A solid and heavy blues rock which kicks quite a bit. The hectic "Gone Crazy" and the delightful rock ballad" Beyond The Clouds" just confirm that this album is by far their best one since "Next" in 1977 (but I admit that it was not very difficult).

A good rock album. Three stars.

There just comes a time when a musician comes to his/her senses and decides to call it quits, and some have done this better than others. In the case of Journey, it would be a huge loss when Steve Perry decided to leave the group after 1996's abysmal Trial By Fire. It's an unfortunate situation when an artist ends on such a disappointing note. To make matters worse, Journey decided to press on with a different singer, and what do they do? They hire a Steve Perry clone. As much of a cop-out as that is, it was received much worse by the fans; rather, not at all by the fans. The problem with that is that Journey fans had always been a particularly resonant bunch with a lot of energy as an audience, so being lukewarm toward news such as this must have been a bit of a blow.

Going into this album with those tidbits of info, I approached an album like this with pretty low expectations... but just like 2001's Arrival, this was a surprising solid release... DAMN good, in fact! For being over 70 minutes worth of material, the band manage to really inject a firm dose of life into their aging sound. The result is a modern album full of classic cuts worthy of Journey's 70's/80's records, as well as some that really surprise on manifold levels.

The first thing you notice is that the songs are exceptionally long for a Journey release... the first song, "Faith in the Heartland" is a daunting 7 minutes long, a length not seen since 1976's title track "Look Into the Future" which clocks in at over 8 minutes. In that sense, the band give a subtle nod to the pre-Perry days, much like Arrival did. The second thing you notice is singer Steve Augeri's resemblance to old classic rock legends like Steve Perry (of course) and Robert Plant. Unfortunately, while he is a capable singer and frontman, he is probably the weakest link on this release, not offering much in the way of anything new from Steve Perry.

The songs comprise what is perhaps the band's most daring material yet. First of all, the album is a lot heavier than previous Journey albums, and some songs were really shocking in how brutal they could be. Take album highlight "Out of Harm's Way" for instance; in the middle after a particularly solid chorus, the band go into a heavy metal breakdown. Yes, you read this right... A JOURNEY METAL BREAKDOWN. Yup, and you know what? It's a very well-done breakdown; I could even see Dream Theater doing this kind of groove on an album like Awake or Falling Into Infinity.

The other daring aspect of the album is to allow other band members to sing a few songs. This is unfortunately one of the areas where it's a mixed bag. Neal Schon's performance in "In Self-Defense" is really solid, and Schon is a very capable singer; unfortunately, I can't say the same about bassist Ross Valory. His performance on "Gone Crazy" is extremely weak despite the song being pretty decent, and he sounds like he's doing a bad pseudo-bluesy ZZ Top impression. Luckily, Augeri still sings the majority of the songs on here, so the album still retains its consistency.

Despite the situation with mixed vocal performances, the songs are in no way mixed or inconsistent. Everything here retains the classic 70's-style Journey sound, and adds its tricks to keep things fresh. The highlights are definitely the hard-rockers like "In Self-Defense" and "Out of Harm's Way," but the band's subtle side sees some fantastic moments as well. "Butterfly (She Flies Alone)" is the big standout in this regard; a soft, distant piano melody starts the song off, and the way Steve's vocals and Jonathan Cain's piano chords fit together is simply sublime in this song. Neal's guitar work adds an overlaying texture to the main melody, and the song never gets boring in its 6-minute runtime.

Overall, this album improves upon Arrival's initial attempt at quasi-recreating the old Journey sound. Generations proves that you in fact CAN retain an old flame years after it's passed, as long as you bring new tricks to the table. It may not have performed favorably in terms of sales, but for non-buyers, it's their loss. This one's a keeper.

The second Steve Augeris fronted Journey album came in 2005 with several differences from their recent works. As title implies, the album is a mix of "old and "new" band´s sound. The tracks are also longer than usual and, most of the time, quite heavier too. The best example of those characters together is the opener: typical AOR Journey, but almost clocking at the seven minute mark, and the guitars are definitely on the upfront. The same goes for The Place In Your Heart, but then on things go differently, with several songs featuring new elements (or, to be more precise, old elements of Journey mark I), like soul, blues, gospel, fusion and hard rock influences. On Out Of Harms Way the influence of Led Zeppelin is overwhelming and Neil Schon proves why he is often cited as one of the most underrated guitar heroes of the world. The guy really kicks ass when he wants to!

Vocals are also handled by all band members at least on one song each, with mixed results. Deen Castronovo is surely their Phil Collins: not only he´s a extraordinary drummer but also sings so well he could have applied to be a singer in another AOR band, maybe even Journey itself. If you don´t believe me just listen to It´s Never Too Late and see for yourself. Small wonder he is the only one who sang on two tracks and did a fantastic job, despite the fact the band had already an outstanding vocalist. And what about the others? Well, keyboardist Jonathan Cain does a decent job on the title track, but Schon and bassist Ross Valory should have stuck to their instruments and sing only backing vocals.

The repertoire is a bit uneven, with some tunes dragging a little too much, but, as usual, the songwriting is good, even on the weakest tracks. Maybe the strongest asset Journey has, beside their obvious musicianship, is their knack for delivering great hooks and melodies, something they never lost all over the years. Their commercial success may have faded with time, but their ability to produce great AOR stuff has not.

Overall I liked the album, although some heavier tunes and overlong ballads did not please me that much. On the other hand there are some fine songs like Beyond the Clouds that deserved to be known by more people.

Rating: 3 stars. A solid, good CD, but not really essential.