greatwhitefullcirclecd

GREAT WHITE-Full Circle

Bluez Tone Records

Great White has come ‘Full Circle’. Well, the band exists for about 40 years now and has gone back to collaborate once again with first producer Michael Wagener who took care of them when they first started out making records in the eighties. So yes, in that aspect the band has come full circle I guess. As you may be aware there are two Great White formations in existence. Original singer Jack Russell released his own record ‘He Saw It Comin’’ under the banner Jack Russell’s Great White with Frontiers Music not so long ago and in my humble opinion did not come up with a great record. The current line-up of Great White recorded the ‘Elation’ album with current singer Terry Ilous (ex-XYZ) in 2012 and it has taken five years to come up with this one, that was recorded in a by Michael Wagener owned studio in his hometown Nashville by Ilous, founding member Mark Kendall (guitar), Michael Lardie (keyboards/guitar), Audie Desbrow (drums) and Scott Snyder (bass). In how far has kept the band the identity that was created on albums like ‘Once Bitten…’, ‘Great White’, the EP ‘Out Of The Night’, ‘Shot In The Dark’, ‘…Twice Shy’, ‘Hooked’ and ‘Psycho City’? Ilous is a different singer when you compare him to Jack Russell that is for sure. But Ilous is a good singer. He is capable of doing straight forward heavy rock, he can do ballads and he has also a clear affection with the blues, so yes, he fits in well with this current formation. Several songs like for instance ,,Big Time’’, the acoustic based ,,Let Me In’’ or the ballad ,,Never Let You Down’’ do make you think about the good old times that this band was up there. But even the powerful production of Wagener can’t hide the fact that overall ‘Full Circle’ is not as good as we might have expected. In the song writing department the band has dropped the ball a bit because tracks like ,,Moonshine’’ (boring) or ,,Big Time’’ are not very impressive. But fair is fair, Great White has delivered a better CD than Jack Russell did. At least the bulk of the songs sound like Great White, yet ‘Full Circle’ is another CD that has its moments but is not a release that does it from beginning until the end.

 

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