Swedish sextet heavy on keyboards deliver high class AOR rock debut – Review of Creye’s latest album
By Bryan Morrison
Sweden has been the hot spot within the past decade for old school style AOR and melodic hard rock. Hailing from Malmo, the sextet known as Creye are the newest band to the ongoing party.
Robin Jidhed (son of Alien singer Jim Jidhed) leads the synth heavy band through thirteen well written and fantastically produced slices of 80’s influenced pop metal. Opening with a pulsing keyboard intro on “Holding On”, courtesy of Joel Ronning, the band swiftly moves into arena rock territory in the vein of Foreigner or Giuffria. The album’s first single, “Different State of Mind” sees the band head into techno rock territory with Ronning again heading things up, while the follow up “Never Too Late” steals some of Don Henley’s finer moments.
Guitarist (and band founder) Andreas Gullstrand opens “Miracle” with a twelve string acoustic, slightly subdued, before kicking into a glorious and huge chorus – quite possibly the album’s standout track.
More pulsing synths are in order for the ballad, “Love Will Never Die” and the pace picks up with “Still Believe In You’, which as the tenth song could have probably been slotted in higher in the running order to shake things up. “City Lights” keeps things upbeat and album closer “A Better Way” is true ear candy
Is Creye doing anything different in their world of melodic rock? Not really. Everything they’re presenting is a bit of a throwback to bands like Dare, White Sister, the aforementioned Giuffria and Foreigner and the like. Strong writing and musicianship are found in abundance on the self titled album but the pacing could have been better as it does get to be a bit “samey” until two thirds of the way through the record.
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