Defy All Reason: The Road Ahead

Cast an eye over my The Burning Crows review, which has been posted at the same time as this, and you'll find me hollering, no screaming, no bellowing from my boots, about the current crop of UK classic rock acts that appear to be surfacing each and every day. The latest recruits to the cause are Welsh upstarts Defy All Reason, who after impressing with their debut EP, Every Second Counts, have returned with their first full lengther, The Road Ahead. To be fair, to simply cast the classic rock net over these guys does them a disservice. Yes, there's little doubt that they've listened to a bit of Zeppelin, some Purple and maybe a touch of Sabbath and yet here we have a record with as much of an eye on Alter Bridge, Southern rock and even a slice of melodic hard rock. Throw in some dirty guitars, which reveal a hankering for checked shirts of the Seattle vintage and Defy All Reasons have cooked up a mix that sounds warm and welcoming, yet still reasonably new and fresh.

Having gone down the Pledge route, the band produced the album themselves and have done a strong, if hardly cutting edge job, the drums a touch obtrusive, the guitars, on the odd occasion, a little too fuzzy and yet the strength of the songwriting still shines through. "You Get Me High" sounds like Kiss gone Southern (well they've turned their hand to everything else), harmony vocals veering from snarly to soaring, as a guitar solo dripping with character shows Gavin Lee Jones (that's him also doing a superb job behind the mic) and Darren Jones to be a vicious, vigorous fret-team. Whereas "Bad Taste Of You" provides a thunk of Black Stone Cherry, neatly combined to an Audrey Horne sense of melody.

Across the fifteen tracks (one or two (or three) too many), the strike rate remains high, as "The Only One" provides a neat slower almost Def Leppard interlude, while "Because Of You" has a riff even chunkier than a man-size Yorkie bar. What possessed the quartet to take the Bon Jovi standard, "Wanted Dead Or Alive" and kind of, but not really, beef it up, I'm not sure, but let's hope they don't do it again, as it's a song we've all heard way too often and this version doesn't even come close. However it's the only true head scratcher in sight and in itself that's more than enough reason for this lot to be defiant.

Track Listing
1. Midnight Train.
2. Bad Blood.
3. Behind Those Eyes.
4. You Get Me High.
5. Bad Taste Of You.
6. Finding My Way (back to you).
7. Shame.
8. I Run.
9. Because Of You.
10. Wanted Dead Or Alive.
11. The Only One.
12. Cure For Healing.
13. Redemption.

Added: August 15th 2015
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Defy All Reason online
Hits: 1565
Language: english

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