This is an interesting release – 28 years after the 1989 release of Walk On Fire’s debut ‘Blind Faith’ comes the follow up ‘Mind Over Matter’.
Founded by Dave Cairns – Walk On Fire featured the vocals of Alan King, Guitars of Mike Caswell, Trevor Thornton (ex-Asia) on drums and Phil Williams on bass, though they employed a variety of session musicians in the studio. I remember seeing them with both Ratt and The Dan Reed Network after the release of their debut for MCA – ‘Blind Faith’ back in the day, and though the album yielded a couple of minor hits (I still have the 12″ of ‘Wastelands’) they were dropped and duly split. After recording material for this second album grunge hit and so we have Mr Cobain partly to blame for the tardy delivery of album number two, though it has been 23 years since he left us so why so long?
Sadly the press release fails to answer the “Why now, after so long?” question (though maybe hints that the tapes have been just recently rediscovered?) or what if anything we’re likely to hear from Mr Cairns and his current line up in the future. In fact I don’t even know if this is simply a transfer of the original 24 track analogue tapes or if the material has been fully remixed and remastered.
One thing I can say definitively is that if you are a fan of guitar-led AOR then this is actually a pretty cool and rather unexpected release! and when you listen to it it’s hard to imagine a record of this quality being shelved no matter what the prevailing trends of the time were.
Starting out with the title track ‘Mind Over Matter’ sets the listener up for a melodic rock masterwork. Every song here is worth your attention but there are some that if you are wavering you just need to hear, So try that opener, add to it the wonderful AOR of ‘Reign Down’; the wonderful ‘Long Live Love’ or the sheer joy of ‘Wicked’. If you want a little heavier then check out the last word which goes to the crunching ‘Drag Me Down’.
Very nice indeed if you love your AOR, and incredible to think and album this good could stay shelved so long.
Track listing:
Mind Over Matter | Spinning Wheel | Pleasure Of Pain |Reign Down | Long Live Love | Save Your Lies (We’ve had Enough) | Wicked| Bad Attitude | Madhouse |Big Gun |Price Of Love | Drag me Down | Colour Of Blood (bonus track with first pressing)