Resurrection

You’d think that most of the audience for Michael Schenker Fest’s Resurrection would be the diehards who have stuck with the German guitarist through all the various incarnations of MSG and its offshoots, not to mention the other bands who he has popped in and out of over the decades. However, while I certainly have at least a passing familiarity with some of his work, I can’t claim to be in this crowd—I mostly checked out Resurrection because I’m utterly fascinated by how now-septuagenerian screamer Graham Bonnet has any semblance of a voice left after a five-decade career of belting notes at the top of his lungs.

Bonnet appears on four tracks here, on what I imagine is a fairly neat compendium of sorts for Schenker fans, incorporating several of the vocalists he’s worked with in his solo career. Bonnet isn’t the only one of the quartet getting up there in age, with Doogie White being the spring chicken of the bunch at a mere 58; Bonnet, White, Robin McAuley, and Gary Barden all bring a sort of weathered presence to the proceedings that you would expect from a group of vets.

Further in line with expectations is that there’s nothing remotely modern about this record. Forget about modern metal influences, Schenker seems barely even touched by the 80s, as his leads stay in Rainbow-era Ritchie Blackmore territory with less distortion on the instrument than you’d expect from even an average AOR band.

The nicest thing about Resurrection is that the band refuses to fall into the sleepy AOR trap of so many veteran acts. A number of these tracks are fairly uptempo, and there are no plodders or even any ballads. Schenker throws in a fairly busy set of riffs that push the pace and cohere into a late-70s rock stomp and even the occasional NWOBHM gallop at times, and as you’d expect from craftsmen who’ve been around this long, the songs generally have a sense of flow and solid melodic construction.

Some of the songs catch on a bit more than others, but there are few overt misses and enough highlights to make the album fairly compelling as a whole. “Take Me to the Church” has an upbeat energy and nice call-and-response chorus for White to play off of. “The Girl with the Stars in Her Eyes” is another White-led track with a rousing chorus and the best guitar solo on the album, and McAuley’s lead turn on “Time Knows When It’s Time” finds a similarly big multi-tracked vocal hook.

Perhaps the two strongest tracks on here, however, are the ones that incorporate all four vocalists, “Warrior” and “The Last Supper.” Sometimes tracks like this tend to sound disjointed in their efforts to fit everyone in, but the vocalists play off each other effortlessly in both tunes, and as they’re the two longest tracks, they have a little more time to unfold than some of the others.

As for the vocalists, they bring some pluses and minuses to the table. On the positive side, everyone sounds inspired and into the material and delivers forceful performances, with the exception of Barden’s odd pseudo-David Lee Roth turn on album low point “Messin’ Around.” On the negative side, there are some weaknesses to the vocal performances, as McAuley and Bonnet’s throaty shouts sound fairly heavily autotuned or at least significantly processed, and White, though generally in fine form, has a little of the Dave Mustaine whine creep into his voice at times. Everyone (except Barden, perhaps) is also given vocal lines that are pretty ambitious—heck, Bonnet goes for a high E in “Night Moods”—and so there’s a lot of strained shouting, especially from Bonnet and McAuley. Still, the singers do function relatively effectively as impassioned veteran storytellers if you can look past the occasional questionable phrase.

One cannot look to an album like Resurrection, given its context, to be some sort of magnum opus. What one can hope for is that it does justice to everyone on hand, still shows some passion and fire, and produces thought-out songs that catch nicely. Michael Schenker Fest may largely seem like a curiosity due to the multiple-vocalist gimmick, but their debut checks all the necessary boxes for fans of throwback hard rock.