THE SEVENTH DEGREE OF SEPARATION

After a 6 year hiatus comes Arena´s new work. I tried very hard to give this CD a fair review. I didn´t want to rush my opinion over it, which I almost did on Pepper´s Ghost, their previous album. But, alas, to no avail. This work does not seduce me like any other Arena did in the past. Don´t get me wrong, it´s not bad. It´s well done, performed and produced. And I was quite hopeful, since I heard bassist extraordinaire John Jowitt was back to the fold. New vocalist Paul Manzi is good and his voice is not very different from that of former singer Rob Sowden

But something has changed: too much vocals, too few guitar solos (and, believe it or not, no keyboards solos at all!), no instrumental tracks and most of the songs are too much alike. In other words: not much to do with their previous works and style. It almost seems like guitarist John Mitchell took over as a leader and Clive Nolan is just happy to follow along filling the few spots left by the ever present distorted guitar riffing. Of course there are good moments (like Close Your Eyes), but nothing that stands out too much. Overall the feeling left is that of a big lack of inspiration hit the band hard.

After repeated spins over the year my opinion hasn´t change much: The Seventh Degree Of Separation is good, but definitely inferior to anything those guys have released before. I like to hear it when I put it on the CD player, but it doesn´t make me feel like other Arena material used to (i.e., to push the repeat button). So don´t be fooled by the two stars rating. I guess it actually deserves three, but I decided to give it a little less to counterbalance the misleading reviews that rate it as a masterpiece (something I really don´t understand, specially because I´m a big fan of Arena). I really hope next time they´ll come up with more convincing material and performances.