Black Country Communion Review

I’ve been long awaiting the album from Joe Bonamassa’s new band “Black Country Communion”, their self titled album recently arrived on my doorstep so here is my quick review.

Firstly, I gave this album a few days playing, in a few different situations, in the car, at home, in the gym on the ipod to give it a fair listen rather than a snap judgement. My quick summary is “very good, but dissapointing”. I’ll attempt to justify this as I know the album and bind have been well recieved.

The album is a great buy, good long track listing with each track well written, of a good legnth and has some excellent musicianship on it. So why am I dissapointed ? The main reason for me is Joe Bonamassa who I am a big fan of, as this rock album is a side track from his blues based rock I expected a different style of playing and a very different guitar sound. While there are elements of change in his sound and playing it’s not enough to differentiate between Joe Bonamassa solo blues artist and Joe Bonamssa guitar player for Black Country Communion. The songs also feel a little rushed and some of the riffs are straight out of Joe’s blues playing, which is not a bad thing as they are good, but I wanted and expected more. The quality of the recording, the finished sound and the styles and techniques of the players if first rate and makes a really good album to listen to, my only critisism is the keyboard/hammond/piano is not used enough or a big enough part of the sound. It’s hard to write these not positive comments about an album that I really enjoy and about players I respect and I’m influenced by but at the same time, because I like and respect these players so much is why my expectations are so high. I feel buying the album was very worth while and I’ll get a lot of listening out of it, but is it going to make a big impact to me? No.

I’ll open up the comments now for the mass of critisism I’ll be expecting.