Escape
Fire in the Sky

Fire is what you get from the sky when Escape returns to the scene with the third album, it has been a while since the previous and main man Vince O’Reagan has a new band this time. It is really his project and this time it is tracks that he has been part of before, old songs but made with new productions, recordings and so on. The cover certainly looks quite exciting, and it is a little bit sad that the cover doesn’t quite reflect what we are getting.

It is all about the AOR, melodic rock or hard rock with catchy songs and lots of melodies. Typical vocals for the genre and the variation of songs are as typical as the singer, I don’t think that there are any really fresh ideas, perhaps the long experience of album making for Vince makes for a blasé kind of song writing and creative process, it is all routine. No surprises. Playing time is also quite long with well over fifty minutes, I don’t think there are any benefit to such a long playing time.

Right, there are so many albums like this that it is really hard to see the point of this album, the sound is fine, production good, etc. but it is not really an album that brings any joy. I think mediocre is the word that mostly comes to mind when I think about how to describe this album, average might also be a fitting description. It is certainly not a very exciting album, none of the songs really stand out. Listening to this album doesn’t really evoke any kind of emotion, I feel mostly indifferent when playing through Fire in the Sky, it is far from a fiery album.

Escape doesn’t really succeed with this new album; it isn’t a complete failure but I wouldn’t recommend this album as there are just so many choices that are way better. It isn’t an album that will be hated, but lack of hating can’t really be taken as an argument for the album. This is an album on the poorer side of the AOR-genre, it is rarely more innovative or novel compared with this one but they are often much better. In the end I think that it would be best to make an escape from this one.

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