grimmstine grimmstine

Released: 26 October 2009 Label: Metal Heaven

Grimmstine are a trans-Atlantic collaborative effort between Steve Grimmet (vocals) and Steve Stine (guitar), and a couple of other guys who are there to make up the numbers and provide rhythm, while the aforementioned Grimmet and Stine do all the flashy stuff.

Soundwise, they’d be mostly classed as NWOBHM, and indeed, the main players have their extensive roots in that genre. On the other hand, there are some truly beautiful pieces of guitar work, almost Opeth-like in their delicacy (when Opeth are in their quiet moments), a variation through soft rock and a descent into Robbie Williams pop music style (Supernatural sounds almost like a straight lift from Let Me Entertain You). The rest is like Saxon, or at least sharing 99.9% of its DNA with Saxon.

Many of the early songs on the album sound too similar to each other, and consequently don’t stand out particularly. The formulaic approach to them doesn’t help either. Of the remainder, the intro to the album, Memory, is an excellent little instrumental, delicate and sweet, while You’ll Never Know is as close as we get to a bluesy style ballad, and is probably my favourite track of the album. It also features Steve Grimmet singing in a lower register, which I like a lot. The final different tracks are Til They Take My Wings and This Don’t Look Like Love to Me, sounding more like American soft rock a la Foreigner, although the first of those does show up some weaknesses in Grimmets vocal control that aren’t apparent elsewhere. The final track, To Sing a Lullaby is made for an acoustic end to a live gig.

Overall, this album has a bit of an identity crisis, being neither straightforward NWOBHM nor soft rock, and will struggle for a target market.

Saying that the other guys are there to make up the numbers is unkind, because the drums and bass that make up the rhythm section are pretty tight, keeping the songs together well.

Production values are high, with a good balance between all the components of the music. It’s very doubtful if I would ever listen to the complete album again, but if any track featured in a playlist, I’d probably quite enjoy it, even though I’d be likely to mistake it for Saxon.

by Alan Thomson