soul doctor way back to the bone

Released: 23 November 2009 Label: Metal Heaven

Once in a while, there comes a review where you are presented with a dichotomy – a band that seems to have mastered a style of music in every way but one. In the interests of increasing the tension of your day (and heightening the chances of you having a heart attack whilst reading this review), I’m going to keep that from you until the end of the review.

Either that or you can cheat and scroll down. It’s your choice.

Soul Doctor have, as a band, succeeded in perfecting a very radio friendly variant of heavy rock, reminiscent of the stadium rock bands of the 1980s. Given that when our antipodean commandant mentioned Soul Doctor to me, I thought she was referring to a Foreigner song, I guess that 1980s stadium rock was exactly what I was expecting.

There are elements of the first track (First Man on the Moon) that make me think of earlier Bon Jovi, with guitarist Chris Lyne sounding for all the world like a Germanic Richie Sambora. The next track, Lightning & Thunder, shows the full extent of Tommy Heart’s skills and evoked an almost immediate comparison to David Coverdale in the early Whitesnake days. Add in a really solid rhythm section and we’re talking about a very talented band here.

Overall, much of the album reminds me of AOR acts like Foreigner, Survivor and their contemporaries. Non-stop, wall-to-wall, good time rock and roll played by musicians with true talent and ability. They really do have everything going for them. Well, everything but one thing – and it’s something I personally find really hard to ignore and look past.

So, what’s my problem with them?

To be honest, one of my little bugbears is watching bands with this much talent doing themselves a disservice by trying to write lyrics in English despite a less than brilliant vocabulary. The worst examples sound a bit like they are pieced together from different pages of a German-English tourist phrase book. Sadly, we’re probably not talking about tongue-in-cheek stabs at the English language like those found on albums by Edguy and Helloween.

If Soul Doctor’s vocals were written in German, or they got a Yankee / Brit friend to help them write some English lyrics, this would be an exceptional CD. Hell, I’ll even volunteer myself … as it is, I had to ignore the lyrics and concentrate on the rest of the album, which saddened me because I enjoyed their sound.

by Kev McCarthy