In general I find the music of Jeff Scott Soto not heavy enough,
but what he serves on this album together with Jorge Salán (guitar), BJ
(keyboards, guitar), David Z (bass) and Edu Cominato (drums) is his heaviest
stuff to date.
Besides these musicians there are a lot of guest players and guest songwriters,
like Gus G., Jason Bieler, Mike Orlando, Joel Hoekstra, Casey Grillo, Connor
Engstrom, Tony Dickinson, Léo Mancini, Hugo Mariutti and Gary Schutt.
Fans
of Jeff know that his soulfull singing is excellent and he rules from start to
finish. The first track "Final Say" is immediately one of the heaviest tracks on
the album, so if you don't think that song is too heavy, you will have no
problem with the rest of the tracks. The song is a kind of mix of Whitesnake,
Skintrade and Skid Row, heavy, groovy and melodic. Most of the songs are groovy
hardrock songs with some metalic edges, sometimes leaning towards power metal.
The focus on this album has been to put on heavy and groovy guitar parts with
melodic refrains. "Wrath" is one of my favorites, it is fast, has heavy almost
thrashy riffs and not typical Soto, but due to the melodic refrain still Soto...
Fans of Journey will find this album maybe a bit too heavy, but still there are some
softer parts that will convince them. But I have to warn you, this is the most
pissed off album Mr. Soto has ever recorded.
The
most impressive song is perhaps "End of Days", one of the softer bit orchestral
songs, typically Jeff, but with a child choir in a kind of "Another Brick in the
Wall" style. Then suddenly half way the tempo changes and on high speed the song
carries on with an excellent solo, to slow down again towards the end. Fans of
the softer Soto songs (think Journey) will like "When I'm Older", but I like the
heavier style more. "Trance" is again a song with heavy guitar work and a nice
groove. Also "Jealousy" is a rather heavy song and not only in this song I
sometimes have to think of the band Skintrade. For me this album was a big
surprise, because I was expecting AOR music Journey style and not a heavy album with
fine songs like this.
Fans of hardrock with some (power) (nu) metal influences, lots of groove and of
course fans of Jeff in general will be pleased with 'Inside the Vertigo'.
