By David O’Neill

Artwork for MMXXI Live At The Phoenix by IngloriousDuring a late 2021 tour, Inglorious recorded a live set from the Phoenix in Exeter and this album is the result of that show.  Whilst the band released a covers album, ‘Heroine’, last year (which is actually very good BTW) and with little in the pipeline why would you not go back and make a live album from one of your sets? Many older, more established bands have done this.

I have seen Inglorious in their previous guise three times and was seriously impressed with them, and the vocal performances of Nathan James are pretty damned good too, both when singing the Inglorious music and when I saw him in ‘War of the Worlds’.  As an individual he polarizes opinion like Marmite. Personally, I like both.

I have yet to see this incarnation live but if the performances on this album are anything to go by, I won’t be disappointed when they make the trek up to that little mountain top venue in July that many locals and others love – Steelhouse!

Eleven tracks from all of the band’s albums are featured here, kicking off with ‘She Won’t Let You Go’, from ‘We Will Ride’. The mix is good and, unusually for some live albums, it is very clear so credits to the engineers on the night: the guitar riff has much more “body” than on the album.  Good start: follow that up with ‘Messiah’ from the same album and things just get better.  The power and range in James’s voice is never in question.  The band appear as tight as a rusty nut despite being the second incarnation of Inglorious, apart from James and Phil Beaver on drums.  However, the new members bring some different sounds to the original music.  As I said the guitar sound is much fuller and has more grunt than the album recordings.

They up the tempo to the bluesy ‘Breakaway’, on which some really nice guitar solos accompany the underlying riff and rhythm sections. The power and range of James voice is no more prevalent than in ‘Where Are You Now?’ and ‘Read All About It’.

A tribute to the Heroine album follows with ‘Barracuda’, and it is a pretty good cover too: well if you are going to cover any Heart track to connect to a generation of game players we would you not cover this from Guitar Hero?

There is no doubting the musicianship of the band on this evidence. There also appears to be enough space for the other members of the band to show their artistry.  The drums of Beaver pound out the rhythm section accompanied really well by the bass of Vinnie Colla; however the guitar playing of Danny Dela Cruz and Dan Stephens are impressive.

A slow down from the rattling cover to ‘Holy Water’ from’ Inglorious I’ (one of my favourite tracks from the band) gives you time to draw breath (and sing along) before the 100mph introduction to ‘He Will Provide’, which has Bond theme written all through it.

They follow that up with the longtime favourite ‘I Don’t Need Your Loving’, a neo-Whitesnake sound that always goes down well with a live audience, and why not? The guitar solo at the breakdown is pretty damned good too.

‘We Will Ride’, from the last original album, is another booming rangy musical/vocal extravaganza with some low-down guitar/bass riffage. Unlike the album version, where a Hammond organ opens the track, the live version of ‘Until I Die’ kicks off with the low-end bass/guitar synchrony carrying the track throughout.

What else is there to say? Whichever side of the polarity you come down on. it can’t be denied that the music and vocals live are as good as the recorded versions. Hopefully the next time we get something from Nathan, Danny, Vinnie and Phil it will be some more original stuff.

Its no ‘Made In Japan’ or ‘Live And Dangerous’, but it’s a good album that will find its way into fans’ collections.

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