Gotthard - Need to Believe (Album)
Gotthard are back with yet another album, Need to Believe. The Swiss hard-rock band has released a string of Number 1 albums lately, and Need to Believe looks all set to follow in that trend. It is an enervating mix of big fist-pumping anthems and harder, darker stories. Who ever said that the Swiss never created anything great?
Gotthard is a 5-piece heavy rock outfit that formed up in 1992. Apparently the band take their name from the Gotthard Pass, a high mountain range in Switzerland. Quite patriotic, these ones.
That said, their patriotism is well rewarded by their nation – their last eleven albums have all charted at number one in their home country. They have sold over two million albums worldwide, and are something of a big name in melodic heavy rock. Need to Believe is their ninth studio album to date.
Gotthard play a very melodic sort of heavy rock. Perhaps it is closest in sound to the NWOBHM genre, with bands such as Saxon and Iron Maiden sounding relatively similar. Lead singer Steve Lee has a soaring voice, and he warbles and wails away in that type of style. The dual guitars interplay as such, and the bass and drums create the beats and pace, with occasional little fills and flairs.
The music also has that semi-old ‘feeling’ about it, that indefinable aural sensation that bands that have been around for twenty-five+ years often create. There is also just a touch of a progressive rock element to their sounds and song structures – not huge, but enough to be easily spotted when it is looked for. The music is driven by Steve’s voice, with generally a slow pace to the lyrics, if not the music in every song. One could easily picture any video clips Gotthard create as being overly dramatic, almost like miniature movies – and indeed the video clips I have seen of the band are rather like this.
There is just that epic feeling to every song on Need to Believe. As cool as this is, however, it gets a little bit, well, disillusioning. The music is great, and I’m sure the musicians are creating what they regard as honest music, but with every song so grand and, dare I say it, pretentious, one wonders how sincere the music really is. A few shorter, raw-er songs in here would go a long way to improving the overall feel of the record. As is the case when shining the esteemed shoe brand Dunlop Volley, too much polish on the record can result in blinding the audience and resulting in ridicule to what is in truth a great work.
The best songs on the album are opener Shangri-La, and further down the album, Right From Wrong and I Know, You Know. A great album, no doubt, but make sure you like this time of epic work before buying. It’s all too easy to see people loving Need To Believe for the first thirty minutes, getting bored of it in the next thirty, and then never playing it again. Be not so disillusioned.
