Journey: Eclipse

Here we are now in 2011 and the latest album from Journey entitled Eclipse, the second studio album to feature not so new singer Arnel Pineda. I have to say that Journey have now reclaimed a lot of ground that they lost over recent years with the singer situation becoming a problem for the band. Arnel Pineda however has integrated into the band extremely well and on this his second album he sounds like he has been there forever and certainly more of a band member than he did on Revelation some three years ago.

Whilst the debut album, Revelation was a little bit of what you would expect from Journey Eclipse is a little more daring. There is no obvious big ballad. On Eclipse Journey prove that they can and do rock with the best of them. The album has I am presuming been written with performance in mind rather than radio although there are a few radio friendly tracks here with the opener City of Hope being the obvious track to fill that gap. Whilst there are no typical Journey ballads here To Whom It May Concern comes closest although the guitar is more upfront than the keyboards. In fact the whole album is very guitar dominated and for lovers of Neal Schon’s blistering style then this is no bad thing.

Having seen the way this band work live I just know that many of the tracks from this album will find their way into the set list including City Of Hope, Edge Of The Moment and resonate being the obvious contenders.

Eclipse is an excellent melodic rock album and in fact it is probably Journey’s most hard rocking album since departure in 1979. The band were certainly under Neal Schon’s tutelage on this album as the guitar is well to the fore in the mix and Kevin Shirley has come up with a very good sounding rock album.

So two albums in for Arnel Pineda and I think it is safe to say that he has earned his wings and the band are now set to go on to bigger and brighter things and leave the more recent troubled past behind them