MASTEDON - review added 29th October 2009
Album Review: 3 (2009)
For fans of: Hard Rock... and the Pachyderm
Cleverly named band, Mastedon. The lead singer and founder is called John Elefante. At Rock Realms we're a big fan of the be-tusked references and think more musicians should use the approach of cunningly naming bands after themselves. Dan Huff could form 'Karate-Grade Strop'. Bruce Dickinson could perhaps go for 'Australian-Bloke Incest'.
John Elefante had his, what I guess you'd call, big break when he became the lead singer and keyboard player for Kansas. He performed on two big albums - Vinyl Confessions and Drastic Measures, as well as recording 'Perfect Lover' with the band for their first (of many) greatest hits albums. What, to this day remains my favourite Kansas song, 'Fight Fire With Fire', was even written by John and his brother Dino.
Post-Kansas, John Elefante became heavily involved in Christian music with groups like Sweet Comfort Band and Petra. Numerous awards and gold/platinum albums followed, and so did his return to rock with Mastedon. The first Mastedon album, 1989's It's a Jungle Out There!, featured multiple lead singers. The 2nd release, 1990's Lofcaudio featured only John on lead vocals. Fortunately, almost 20 years on, new release 3 takes the latter approach too.
2009's Mastedon features, alongside John Elefante (lead vocals; rhythm guitar, keyboards) and Dino Elefante (additional guitars, acoustic guitar, backing vocals), John's former Kansas bandmate Kerry Livgren on lead guitars, Dave Amato (REO Speedwagon) also on guitar, Anthony Sallee (Whiteheart) on bass, Dan Needham (Michael McDonald, Amy Grant, Garth Brooks) on drums, plus contributions from Tim Smith (bass on 'Slay Your Demons') and Jr McNeely (additional guitar on 'Questions')
The sound is impressive - big on melodies, classy and mature sounding. It also references a lot of what you've heard before. Whether this is a problem or not is going to come down to the individual. For me, it's at the back of my mind throughout and arguably taints a number of tracks.
The first two entries 'Revolution Of Mind' and 'Slay Your Demons' sound uncannily like the work of Seventh Key - the harmonies are near-identical and the song structures aren't far off. Blame the common factor of Kansas. Seventh Key main-man Billy Greer has been with the band since the mid 1980's. Clearly, whatever rubbed off on him also rubbed off on John Elefante.
'Nowhere Without Your Love', on the other hand, sounds near-identical to Boston's 'A Man I'll Never Be'. It's an absolutely, unequivocally breathtaking song in isolation. The harmonies are beyond amazing and the song's vastness is simply stunning...but, and this is a but(t) bigger than you'd find on a really fat hippo...the song really does sound annoyingly familiar. 'One Day Down By The Lake (See You Real Soon)' starts with an interesting laid-back hard-rocking segment before heading off down a Kansas-inspired organ-led route. The song traverses heavily ASIA-esque progressions, folk musings and gentle instrumental interludes. The result is another massive and magnificent but familiar song.
'Water Into Wine (Fassa Rokka)' is original enough, but not actually that exciting. 'Questions (It's About Time)' is a chilled slower song with a sweet vibe. It heads in vaguely directionless loops, but they really are very nice loops so we won't moan too much. 'You Can't Take Anything' has a welcomed turn of pace. So does 'Lying', although it's a much better song - one of the best on the album. 'The Western World' treads water, 'That's What You Do' is verging on brilliance and is again near the top of the Mastedon tree. Final track 'Dust In The Wind' is not massively dissimilar to the original Kansas version. It's well performed but brings nothing new to the track.
I like this album. It's stunningly performed, beautifully produced and, in principal, very good. But...you can't get away from the fact that chunks of the album are derivative and, as much as it pains me to say this, a few of the songs just aren't that exciting. There's no doubt that the guys can pump out music with the very best the world can offer. This isn't quite it though, although it is extremely close.
Check out... The references to other songs and bands throughout.
Track List:
01. Revolution Of Mind
02. Slay Your Demons
03. Nowhere Without Your Love
04. One Day Down By The Lake (See You Real Soon)
05. Water Into Wine (Fassa Rokka)
06. Questions (It's About Time)
07. You Can't Take Anything
08. Lying
09. The Western World
10. That's What You Do
11. Dust In The Wind
Label: Frontiers Records
Artist's website(s): MySpace
