Admit it… lately when you see a lot of famous musicians as guests in an album of a band, or solo artist you are having seconds thoughts about it… maybe you are not wrong most of the times, since projects like that usually fail to satisfy the listener’s high expectations…
However, this is not the case for Will Wallner from Britain, and Vivien Vein from Croatia, a couple who decided to leave everything behind and follow its rock’n’roll dream and move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music recruiting a galaxy of star-musicians for its debut album, “Rising”. The two take over guitars, and vocals, while for the rest there is: Carmine and Vinne Appice, Brian Tichy on drums, Jimmy Bain, Tony Franklin and Rudy Sarzo on bass, Derek Sherinian and Tony Carey, who also wrote two songs, on keyboards – check out the intro on the last track, and try to bring in mind an album with the same title…
Their style, as you can easily assume is classic ‘70s-‘80s hard rock with Rainbow, Malmsteen, and Riot as their major points of reference. Vein’s voice proves quite interesting. Especially her grain that makes her performance even more intense on the rather predictable, but well-crafted songs. Despite the fact that there is a different line up on every single track, the album sounds like there is a band playing, and not a parade of special guests. The only odd thing about the album was the song “Soul Monster” where Tony Franklin sings. I think Vivien would have done a much better job!
In general “Rising” is a fairly good album, and a worth mentioning effort on the female fronted hard rock niche.
