Reviews roundup – Joel Sarakula vs. The Jokers vs. Cynthesis

Reviews roundup – Joel Sarakula vs. The Jokers vs. Cynthesis

JOEL SARAKULA
The Golden Age
Art Parade

Here’s the debut album from throwback, Australian singer / songwriter, Joel Sarakula.  I say throwback because despite some modern kinks, this is very much the child of the seventies, when it was deemed acceptable for skinny white boys to strum an acoustic guitar and talk about their feelings.

He does chuck in some more modern elements, with a wee bit of electronica hither and thither to liven things up, no more so than on the opening ‘I Will Deliver’, which is straight out of a seventies police show.

That’s when it’s at its best.  Sometimes he can get a bit indie by numbers, but it’s early days, and songs as good as ‘Only One Still Dancing’ give you hope for his future.

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THE JOKERS
Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Alive
Nineteenth Century

I said of the debut album by The Jokers, “Grooving away in a fine, retro blues and boogie rock style, Liverpudlians The Jokers have banged out an absolutely fantastic slab of rock and roll. Mixing up bands like Aerosmith, AC/DC, The Mooney Suzuki and Mott The Hoople, the nine tracks here are, with a couple of exceptions, the finest new music I’ve heard this year.”

But that was back in 2009, and they’ve let time get in the way of a breakthrough.  Factor in the fact that the songs aren’t as good this time around, and it’s a wee bit of a letdown.

They’re still rooted in the seventies vibe, with hard driving blues based riffs, something I’m always a fan of, but apart from the best five tracks, a lot of the numbers are a bit ho-hum.  However, the opening salvo of ‘Silver City’ and the title track will fool you, as they’re as good as anything the band have done.

There is a cracking EP in here, and hopefully the punters who saw them opening for just about everybody three years back won’t have forgotten them.

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CYNTHESIS
ReEvolution
Sensory 2013

Two years on from their debut, “DeEvolution”, here come the Californian prog metallers with part two of their trilogy.  And it’s a good one.

They start things off with a gentle instrumental opening, before ‘Convergence’ arrives to blast you into their world, in which they manage to balance heaviness and technicalty with ease.  When they go all out for the metal, as they do on the likes of ‘Persistence of Visions’, it’s an awe inspiring sound which a lot of prog metallers should take not of.

The whole band are bang on, without a wasted note, and even if a couple of the songs have been stretched out just a wee bit too far, you can forgive them.  They’ve come close to a classic here, and it’s certainly a benchmark for all the other up and coming prog metallers to aim for.

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