Kane Roberts
Saints and Sinners

Kane Roberts feels a bit like a caricature of a rock god or something with his silly overly masculine warrior like style and his machine gun guitar and all of that, that was at least the impression when looking at his debut from 1987 which was re-released some months ago and not very well received by myself. Now it is time for his second album to be re-released and that looks very different, not a good album cover but at least not as stereotypically hardrocky as the debut. Question is why Yesterrock did not refurbish the cover when they did the songs. This album was originally released in 1991 and now it sees the light of day again, in two version one limited with an extra CD containing four extra track while the standard issue is as the vinyl once was with ten tracks and 45 minutes of playing time.

So, the cover is a bit more down to earth or less comedic than the debut, is the music as well? I would say that it is, the album has a better flow when playing through it, no show-off guitar tracks and just big, powerful arena rock anthems and ballads and kickass rockers. Think Bon Jovi and you have at least some sort of frame of reference, Kane’s music is a bit rougher and more powerful than Bon Jovi’s though. The production here is excellent and you will be quite hard pressed to find traces that point towards the album being released in the early nineties, it sounds a lot more fresh than that, the bonus tracks are a bit less timeless but are well produced as well. Good variation on the theme we have here as well and Kane sings a whole lot better on this album than he does on the debut. This album sounds more mature and well produced than the debut album that was released four years earlier.

I think good, to answer your question. There are some very powerful hit songs combined with a racket of decent rockers which in total makes this a good album. Maybe a bit common to really stand out, and it should have at least one more big hit to do so as well. But there isn’t really anything to complain about when looking at this album, other than the cover which is boring but it has nothing to do with the music so that is something you might be able to live with. If you are an arena rocker I think you are in for a treat with this one.

Best is the seventh track Fighter which is a perfect, clever, catchy and energetic rock song made to perfection, such a track that is impossible not to enjoy no matter what you think of the music in general. And you cannot stop singing along with the ultra catchy chorus it has. I also very much enjoy the second single (back then) Does Anybody Really Fall in Love Anymore? which is a brilliant song with another excellent chorus, these two are great hits that really should have made this guy bigger but this album came at the dawn of the terrible Grunge genre. I do however think that this album would have needed at least one more track like these to really stand out because most of the album is still made up of quite ordinary rock songs.

So, a positive surprise for sure and one that anyone seriously into arena rock must have in his/her collection and one that is definitely worth to release again as it contains some real gems in the list of songs. I think it is well worth a look.