Eclipse – Wired: Album Review

By Mike Ainscoe on 7th October 2021 • ( Leave a comment )

Eclipse deliver the goods (again) in the tired and trusted way on their eighth album with their powerful Melodic Hard Rock.

Release date: 8th October 2021

Label: Frontiers Music srl

Format: CD / digital / vinyl (incl coloured) / musicassette

Coming off the back of Paradigm, their most successful album yet that yielded the anthemic single Viva La Victoria (not to mention their Viva La Victouria live work) Sweden’s Eclipse is back with a new studio album. There’s no surprise that it’s yet another collection of sure-fire melodic Hard Rock winners from the mind of Erik Martensson. He’s simply the master musician with the golden touch when to comes to adding an injection of hooks and melody to Hard Rock music.

Magnus Henriksson is again at the right hand of the main man with the Philip and Victor Crusner rhythm section providing the hard-to-shift solid core and preceded by the single, the fist-pumping Saturday Night (Hallelujah) the new record sees the Swedish quartet doing what they do best and building on their strengths. It may well be that some of the best songs of their career arrive on this record. The result is an uplifting and much-needed monster of an album in true Eclipse style in the aftermath of the pandemic age.

At a time when Bon Jovi seems to be reaching twilight of a famous career, Erik and the boys should surely be ready to step into a pair of boots that they’d fill comfortably. The opening flurry of songs confirms what most of us have known since Bleed & Scream set the new standards almost ten years ago.

And while the songs remain pretty much the same, the variety from the plethora of chart busting hooks comes via songs like Carved In Stone that retains an acoustic-based arrangement when it could so easily have been given a coat with the Eclipse Hard Rock brush. Poison In My Heart gets the best of both worlds. In what starts off as a power ballad, the ante is upped and regular service is resumed mid-song.

Talking of sure fire singalong anthems, We Didn’t Come To Lose should surely be adopted by some sports team or other. Imagine Eclipse being afforded the same status as Judas Priest (United) and Queen (We Are The Champions, of course) and Pet Shop Boys (their ffoty themed variation Go West ringing around the Arsenal stadium) with a suitably placed set of “whoa-oh-oh” chants and the closing Dead Inside has all the hallmarks of a thrilling set opener.

With the old adage of if it ain’t broken, why fix it, coming to mind, the fearsome formula continues to prove to be a winning one.