Face The Music is Burning Rain's fourth album in 20 years, which is understandable when you look at the resumé of the players: guitarist Doug Aldrich has kept himself busy with Revolution Saints, the Dead Daisies, Dio, Whitesnake or Glenn Hughes while vocalist Keith Nelson was fronting the legendary Montrose and worked with Lynch Mob and Quiet Riot among others. Joining them on that album is bass player Brad Lang from Y&T and drummer Blas Elias of Slaughter. Enough credentials for you?
With that background, no one expects the record to sound like anything but pure hard rock and this is exactly what you get. The level of musicianship is obviously very high, but there are no displays of sterile virtuosity: the real focus here are the songs and there isn't a clunker in the 11 tracks. They are all perfectly crafted pieces, full of melody but never veering into generic fluff metal material. The riffs are sharp, the solos are biting and the vocals are rugged and powerful.
Highlighting one song is difficult, as the record is consistently good but this reviewer's favorite song might be Beautiful Road, which is reminiscent of Warrant's Machine Gun. The title track could have been a hit a couple of decades ago. Midnight Train chugs along on a very Aerosmith kind of groove. Shelter is a dynamic, bluesy number that mixes acoustic guitars and heavier instrumentation. If It's Love has a definite Whitesnake vibe...
Face The Music is a great album that rips for 50 minutes straight: there isn't one ballad to be found. Instead, just a bunch of killer hard rock tunes played by seasoned veterans of the genre, whose have become experts in the art of making you tap your feet and bang your heard.
Genre: Hard Rock
Release Date: March 22, 2019
Label: Frontiers
Rating: 7/10
