CD´s Reviews
Release Date: Unknown
Line Up: Jeff Scott Soto - Vocals , Marcel Jacob - Bass , Howie Simon and Freddie Åkesson - Guitars, Jamie Borger - Drums
In the light of a double live CD (and a double DVD) release, it is suitable to start this review with a bit of a history of the band. Talisman is a Swedish band who debuted in 1990 with ‘Talisman’, an album that contained enough classic stuff to collect long time respect in the melodic hard rock scene. It was the result of a new cooperation between vocalist Jeff Scott Soto – later he became famous in several projects and as a solo artist – and bass player Marcel Jacob (Yngwie Malmsteen). Those days, Sweden was mostly known for his ‘lighter’ hard rock stuff like Europe, Yngwie Malmsteen and Treat. Talisman soon became one of them.
It took three years before the band released a successor ‘Genesis’, lots of line up changes happened and even then the band released an excellent live registration, called ‘Five Out Of Five – Live in Japan’. Following albums showed us careful flirting with funk elements in the music, under the moniker of Human Clay two albums were released and eventually the band returned back in the scene in 2003 with ‘Cats & Dogs’. This album had some catchy classic ones again and they are presented live on these recordings.
CD 1 contains recordings of a show in Club Mondo in Stockholm (2003). The seventeen tracks offer a nice summary of the band’s career and the place rocks that night. Except for their own material, one can consider the Seal cover ‘Crazy’ as remarkable and very well. The songs sound a lot heavier live, we can enjoy loads of marvellous guitar soloing and of course Soto performs as a fantastic singer.
On CD 2 we can find many similar tracks, but classic songs like ‘Mysterious’ and ‘Break Your Chains’ cannot be missed at any concert. This time we are dealing with a performance at the Famous Sweden Rock Festival and it is a great honour for every band to appear on that event. An unique document which is also available on DVD.