• Rating:
This time, the return from the oblivion of a formidable band from the eighties corresponds to a delightful and fully satisfying product. Things change a bit in this their fourth album, dated 2008 and nineteen years distant from the third.
Indeed, the talented guitarist and singer Francis Dunnery is no longer part of the band, but he is sumptuously replaced by the excellent Irish musician John Mitchell, who possesses the same instrumental skill and a truly different voice, less distinctive and "acidic" than his predecessor's, warmer and more romantic. It reminds me (in a good way) of Neal Morse.
Almost as tireless as the latter, Mitchell divides his time between It Bites, Arena, and his solo career. He has the chubby and ordinary appearance of a shopkeeper, well-groomed and anonymous, but instead, he excels as a musician, showing that he integrates well into the It Bites style. This style features a progressive sound far from classicism and medieval themes, often close to hard rock and especially suffused with peculiar choir styles.
The synergy with the other brilliant mind of the Bites, the keyboardist Robin Beck, who is never considered enough, is optimal and fruitful. The album sounds great, is generously long (80 minutes, with the last ten as bonus... more than that wouldn't fit on a single CD) and varied, beautiful right from the cover.
The best tracks, the ones for which it's definitely "worth it" to listen, playlist, buy, appear to be:
_ The second track "Ghosts", a tumultuous hard rock ride with Mitchell unveiling his roughest timbre. Fantastic is Beck's Guardiano del Faro-like tone, especially in the central instrumental break, preluding a lively guitar solo.
_ The sixth track "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (a very folk title), an eight-minute mini-suite with fine, lyrical slow sections, beautifully sung, enhanced by a fantastic guitar/synth duet with a fusion flavor and characterized by the usual care for choirs, counter-choirs, vocal counterpoints.
_ The other suite "This is England", placed as the eleventh and last track before the two bonus tracks and extended to over thirteen minutes. Its beginning is touching: melodic voice on a keyboard carpet and it seems exactly like something from Prefab Sprout, truly moving, the vocal style being just like that of the ingenious Paddy McAloon! Then the song layers with the arrival first of a very rhythmic organ, then the drums, and finally the lead guitar. Breaks, changes of atmosphere, counter-choirs, odd times, another organ this time ecclesiastical... the entire progressive group's prowess stretches the piece, keeping it interesting without the need for endless solos, amassing different ideas one after another as the masters of this genre know how to do. And It Bites, humbly, are among them.
The album ultimately has no fillers. Aside from the two suites, the other episodes range from four to six minutes, often compact and devoid of extraordinary variations and instrumental digressions. Each track has its merits, and thanks particularly to the presence of founding member Robin Beck and his thousands of synthesizer sounds used in a personal way, it perpetuates that characteristic It Bites sound, to which Mitchell's inspired guitar readily aligns.
There is a widespread bias, the preconceived notion of never giving any chance to reunions of rock "dinosaurs" after a few decades. This is fitting most of the time, but not always and anyway. There are exceptions, and this full-form comeback of It Bites is an example.
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