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THE FERRYMEN
The Ferrymen
Frontiers Music Srl - 2017

With a lineup featuring Ronnie Romero (LORDS OF BLACK, RAINBOW) on vocals, Magnus Karlsson (PRIMAL FEAR) on guitar, bass and keys and drummer Mike Terrana (RAGE), the self-titled debut release from THE FERRYMEN has a strong built in musical pedigree right from the start.

With Romero's powerful vocals adding an intriguing bit of edge to the songs, the music does have its extreme high points. I've seen a lot of comparison to Dio when it comes to describing Romero's vocal sound. It's not entirely accurate but there is enough of a similarity to give you an idea.

The album kicks off with the smartly crafted "End Of The Road", an aggressive rocker that starts off with a mini intro that initially casts the song with a cinematic and epic vibe to it.

While I've known of Mike Terrana for a while now, I can't recall ever having listened to anything that he was a part of before now. But the way he artfully nails his work on the drums gives the bottom half of the music a very muscular foundation upon which the band can lay down the rest of the music for the disc.

I found that I enjoyed the tracks that tended to lean more towards a balls out rocking pace. Songs like "Fool You All" and the closing song "Welcome To My Show" really became earworms for me.

I did like the sense of righteous defiance in the lyrics for "Still Standing Up", it gave a real macho feel to the song. The delivery of the vocals in the main lyrical passages in "Eyes On The Sky" draws you in quickly. The ballad "One Heart" starts off slowly but grows into a more uptempo affair about 3 1/2 minutes into the song and that's when I found more of a connection with the song. I liked the music on "How The Story Ends", but found the chorus a bit weak and it detracted from the song as a whole.

The biggest problem in finding complete satisfaction with the album is that with the concerted effort to cast each song with that same kind of overarcing epic feel from the first track onward, there is a kind of uniformity to the majority of the songs. While there's still plenty to like, the lack of diversity in the group's sound threatens to make things all run together. Whether because of the sense that a lot of releases from Frontiers tend to sound alike, or if it is because this is essentially an outlet for more music by Karlsson, who wrote all the songs and produced the album, I'm not sure.

At this time it is unclear if this is a one-off project or if there are plans to make THE FERRYMEN more of a full time band. Either way, despite some admittedly good songs on The Ferrymen, I think the album suffers from having too much of the same kind of sound from song to song. This holds me back from giving it a full throttle recommendation.

3.0 Out Of 5.0

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