Formulaic, old-fashioned and uninspired - A review of Axel Rudi Pell's Sign of the Times

Axel Rudi Pell is a band situated somewhere between hard rock, progressive rock and heavy metal stylistics of the late seventies and early eighties. While this charismatic combination has worked well in the past, the band's last few releases have progressively become less and less inspired. Sign of the Times might be one of the band's worst outputs in terms of creativity.

As usual, the new record starts with a decent short instrumental overture entitled ''The Black Serenade'' that is followed by first single ''Gunfire''. Even though this song is among the better ones on this output, it is already filled with tired tropes. The song is around five minutes long, held in mid-tempo pace throughout, convinces with emotional vocals, melodic guitar play and atmospheric keyboard layers while the drum rhythms are tiresome and the bass guitar nearly inaudible. This description could be applied to every single track except for the instrumental overture and the slightly longer title track. Each time the band uses this same procedure again, the songs get less and less convincing and the record's second half becomes hard to sit through. Aside of the decent single, only the passionate ''Bad Reputation'' is noteworthy which is mostly due to the inspired vocals that save the day and distract from average musicianship.

Instead of releasing a new output every two years that rehashes the same ideas like a broken record, Axel Rudi Pell should try out something new in order to remain relevant. The band could listen to some music that was released in the last thirty years for a change, take some more time to work on its formulaic songwriting and make sure that the bass guitar becomes more audible and that the drummer doesn't fall asleep while recording the next bunch of new songs. As it is now, Axel Rudi Pell wastes a lot of potential in form of an underrated singer, great guitar player and skillful keyboarder with boring songwriting, fluffy production and lack of creativity. Being faithful to your style is a good thing but when it becomes stubborn, retrospective and predictable, then the sign of the times indicates some changes to keep things going well.

To keep it short, Axel Rudi Pell's Sign of the Times is one of the band's least inspired outputs and can only be recommended to extremely faithful fans.

Final rating: 55%