vote
6.5
- Band:
Shady Lane - Duration: 00:45:58
- Available from: 03/14/2025
- Label:
-
Underground Symphony
Streaming not yet available
Shady Lane are a completely Italian group, born in Turin from the mind of the guitarist Salvo Vecchio to whom Luca Bernazzi's bass joined a few months later. Although the date of birth of the team is relatively recent (let's talk about the second half of 2024), the band managed to give birth to the debut album entitled “There and Back” only a few months after the start of its musical path.
The first record work of the Shady Lane places itself as a concept album characterized by multiple influences ranging from the prog of the Dream Theater to that of the Queensryche, without disdaining some elements clearly stolen from the Power world that are fine with the clear and unwilling voice of the singer Roberto Quassolo.
The concept, inspired by the figure of Arthur Conan Doyle, describes a journey of the author who develops between Italy and the United States and opens with “Hiding Our Fears”, a song with a strong Power flavor, so much so as to seem to have come out of an album of the Avanthesia and rather suitable to fill the delicate role of the opening piece.
The band's creativity seems to be expanding already with “Modern Decadence Mirror”, a decidedly more progressive rock piece, equipped with an articulated battery and a guitar with an oriental flavor, capable of jumping among the heads of the antero to the most delicate ones of a semi-acoustic pre-sortornello; To underline also the use of vocal effects that tend to give a vintage radio effect to a piece that lends itself well to such experimentation.
The time that moves fast and inexorable is the main theme of “Seasons”, also a passage with progressive rock cut, this time surrounded by a dark and pessimistic aura – vaguely in the style of the Vanden Plas – and broken in the middle by a single guitar that chasing itself with the frenetic keyboard of Antony Elia, before radical style and transforming into an harsh and angry. Often interspersed with recited pieces, capable of creating a fairly destructured but overall pleasant puzzle.
If the first part of the album had given interesting ideas, the same cannot be said of the remaining songs, which instead tend to lose the bite shown in the initial half: listening after listening is noticed how some riffs tend to repeat themselves with the incede of the tracks, and it seems that the band proposes less inspired rhythmic solutions and, at times, almost calls.
Songs like “The Great Unknown” try to take the role of the ballad not completely succeeded in this task – and reaching the “Solary Shell” of the Dream Theater, but with a somewhat repetitive and a little monotonous structure. A similar speech can be made for “Shed Light”, which stands halfway between the Power Ballad and a more symphonic piece with very airy keyboards, capable of generating a nice carpet of sounds, on which, however, guitars walk in a little inspired way and vent in just decontextualized, which often sound like mere technical exercises.
Wanting to propose areas of improvement, we can certainly say that – considering the concept structure that the album had to follow – it would have been nice to create a musical theme, and try to narrate the story through leitmotif or particular themes related to the characters or places where the story settles; Such an approach would have given, in the opinion of the writer, a sense of greater cohesion and laid the foundations for the second act of the concept, already announced by the Shady Lane.
In the end, “There and back” is an album that certainly passes the baptism of fire but sins a little excessive security, giving almost the impression that some ideas and some stylistic solutions should have been rodaed a little more by a band that, at the end of the games, sounds together only for a year.
We certainly appreciate the courage but we still feel to say that debut with a concept album divided on two acts perhaps represents a very large leap, which pushes the team a little too much beyond the physiological comfort area that every artist worthy of the name should try – with the right times – to abandon.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
