Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Eventually you will climb back into the chair that you were blown from, exhausted, scraping at the floor like a mountaineer ascending Everest, knuckles white and fingers cracked from the exposure of high velocity winds that emanated from the speakers and the soul driven on by the calling of standing atop of the tallest peak down upon the wreckage, the fight of other’s albums trailing in the wake just to reach camp one and their insistence on taking a breather every few minutes. Eventually you will sit back in the replaced chair and take back the feeling that comes from such an experience, that to sit in the majesty of the sound, to feel the Resonate and the reverb continue to vibrate in your bones; that is the feeling of being alive.
Glenn Hughes makes any listener feel alive, Glen Hughes could arguably inspire you to climb Everest, canoe downstream the Amazon River or walk the length of the Sahara Desert in nothing but sand shoes, in any type of Metal induced t-shirt and only carrying a canteen of water around your jeans; he echoes the pounding nature of his music across the decades and is not one to feel as though he is letting you down by laying every card upon the solid oak table of industry and magical effect of a guitar that could level mountain tops.
To Resonate is to reason, to motivate and aim to shake everything to its foundations and its very core, to feel the edge of life quiver like a newly married couple on their wedding day, their shared expectancy at being together for the rest of their lives, to resonate is the point of Glenn Hughes’ new album and it is one that is utterly compelling, dynamite, full of wave after wave of powerful blasts of cold devastating energy that wash over the listener time and time again, a musical tsunami that breaks in a crested top and mutual affection.
In songs such as the superb and beguiling opener Heavy, Flow, God of Money, Landmines and Stumbles & Go the listener is instructed to hold on for all their might to anything that will stop them from floating to far from the safety of the Rock they cling to, this is the damning of the safety in pop, the shaming of some that use pseudo rock to titivate and cajole; Resonate is hard, incredible and alive, an album of perspective and one that is truly complete.
Ian D. Hall