Bangalore Choir - Center Mass

In 1991, not long after a short stint fronting Accept on their album Eat The Heat, David Reece formed the band Bangalore Choir.  While their 1992 album On Target received positive reviews, its release coincided with grunge taking over the music world and the band broke up a short time later.  Over the ensuing years he has had a solo career and also fronted numerous bands.  Bangalore Choir has also popped up a few times over that time with different lineups, releasing Cadence in 2010, Metaphor in 2012 and now Center Mass in 2023.  With a sound largely rooted in eighties and nineties metal, the album has plenty of variety but still manages to be a very cohesive collection of songs.  The album kicks off perfectly with the hard charging “Spirit Rider”, followed with “Back To Life”, a catchy track with just a hint of a funk groove in spots, that’s a throwback to nineties era arena rock.  The epic hair metal power ballad “I Just Wanna Love You” is good for what it’s worth and has a really strong vocal from Reece, but to me is a little dated today.  “Heat Of The Night”, which has a hint of blues and is driven by an extremely infectious guitar riff, and “Wind At My Back” are a couple of really solid, super hooky tracks that both could have been big radio hits back in the melodic rock heyday.  “Blame It On Me” is a nice, laid-back, soulful acoustic cut that is one of the album’s highlights, along with “Back 2 U”, an aggressive hard rocker with a really gritty edge, and the down and dirty “Downtime With The Devil”.  Following “Without You”, another infectious track driven by a very earwormy guitar lick, is the epic “While Bullets Fly”, another classic nineties sounding arena rocker that starts off slow and simple before kicking into full gear about halfway through.  “If The Good Die Young Part 2” is the follow-up to part 1 (although not titled that way then) that was found on their debut album, and unlike that track which was a ballad, part 2 is an edgy, balls to the wall rocker.  Closing thing out is a solid cover of Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” given a faster and heavier take.  Reece’s vocals are outstanding throughout the album and the musicianship is top-notch with plenty of great guitar solos.  The initial pressing of Center Mass also includes an eight song CD recorded live in Hamburg, Germany in 2022.  There aren’t a lot of details about this live set, but seven of the tracks are from the On Target album and the other is “Victim Of The Night”, a song from the band Razormaid that included two original members of Bangalore Choir. The recording is really good and the band sounds great, and it definitely makes a nice addition to the CD.

(Global Rock Records / Cherry Red Records)