You all want to think yourself lucky that I never had this website in 2004. If I had have done, there would have been inordinate amounts of me gushing about a band called Silvertide.
Their album, “Show And Tell” is one of the lost classics, and I’ll stand by that. So when I read that David Ivory, who worked with the band (and others like Halestorm), was acting as producer here, then my interest was piqued.
Red Reign” have been around for a while, opening for bands like Tesla, Lita Ford, Quiet Riot, Dokken, Jackyl and others – and they’ve already had an EP out before this one.
This – to be truthful – is the first of their material I’ve heard, but it sounds as if RR are a band that is ready and primed to make a move.
These are original songs – but they are instantly familiar. Least they are to anyone who grew up listening to 80s arena rock. This, right from the opening riff of “Not The Way”, is big. Like, massive. Like, swaggering. Huge lead guitar breaks, with echoes of the aforementioned Tesla, and the idea that all choruses should be sturdy enough to hang things off.
Where this scores big, though, is for all that, it never sounds dated and dull. A look through the bands from their home of Richmond, Virginia shows you the breadth of sound that comes from its soil, and so it is here. “Toxic” goes from mellifluous to thunderous drumming in an instant, and there’s something of a brooding quality to “Chains” bass, before it settles into something Van Halen might have demoed in the early Hagar days.
The title track (which gets bonus points for doing the Iron Maiden thing of being the title track and the name of the band) is perhaps the best of the lot. Hard rock of the more muscular variety, something like Adrenaline mob might have had a crack at. There’s nothing boring here, that’s for sure.
If their heroes always had a power ballad or two, then you can’t blame them for, “What Is Love For”, but “Every Rose….” This is not. This deals with the thorns, as it were, and does tender with a clenched fist and gritted teeth.
This is a band that clearly has a hell of a lot of skill, and the ambition to match. It will be interesting to see where they go, but wherever it is, it will be on their own terms.
Rating 8/10
