By Monk
Like many of their contemporaries from the late Eighties/early Nineties, the story of Heaven’s Edge is one of those “coulda shoulda woulda” tales of conspiring fates and bad luck twists, highlighted by their bass player being shot on stage shortly after signing a major record deal, which basically put their career on hold. By they time they got back on track, the hair metal movement at which they were the centre had had its make-up stolen and thrown in the gutter and their previous momentum spluttered to an ignominious halt. However, after numerous on-off-on again attempts to revive those short-lived past glories, the band are back with four-fifths of their original line-up still intact and their first collection of new songs in a little more than 30 years.
To be honest, this is a decent hard rock album. And like a football match, it is one of two halves, with the first very much rooted in the era which spawned the band. It doesn’t sound overly dated, although it does very much plough the Def Leppard ‘Hysteria’ vein, especially on the likes of ‘Nothing Left But Goodbye’ and ‘What Could Have Been’ – the latter of which, it has to be said, very much sums up the feel of this album, at least so far. However, it is all delivered with the fresh coat of paint that modern production techniques bring, although the effect is also one that just comes across as just a bit too squeaky clean in places.
The sound on the second half is a lot grittier and possessive, exploring more the Kix/Y&T route, with the effect of making you want the first part to have grabbed you with as much immediacy. It is in this latter half that the album has its most enjoyable and impactful moments, such as on the crunching ‘Raise ‘Em Up’, which wouldn’t sound out of place on the new Extreme album, and ‘9 Lives’, which possesses plenty of that old school bump and grind that get your aging hips doing just that (well, as much as they can at our time of life…).
Heaven’s Edge may not take us there, and they mightn’t have got it quite right, but they’ve got damn close to doing so.
- ‘Get It Right‘ is out now.
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