From the magazine covering Christian Hard Music this pleasant CD comes. The idea is simple: Let fifteen bands cover a song each from one of their favorite bands and put it on one CD. Bands featured here are: Tourniquet, Doug Pinnick, Echo Hollow, Spy Glass Blue, Reflescent Tide, Justin Fox, Paul Roraback, Crimson Thorn, Guardian, The Channelsurfers, Blackball, Atomic Opera, One Bad Pig, The Violet Burning and Larry Norman. Quite some well known songs are here like Sunday Bloody Sunday of U2 (Echo Hollow), C'mon Rock of Stryper (Guardian) and Message In A Bottle, known from the Police (Blackball). Musically you hear all kind of styles but the absence of punk and hardcore is rather striking. Contrary to that, you even hear some acoustic songs. What that has to do with Hard Music, I don't know. It's stuff that will be more appealing to our parents, I guess. But, this is a cool album full of enthusiasm. There are several songs when my hands automatically reach for the volume knob to crank these out loud. Sometimes I wonder whether I like these versions for the sake of it or that I like them because I already liked the originals. Whatever, it says something of the way how the originals were treated. There is respect for the originals so that they aren't wasted in an attempt to be renewing. That's not the goal of this CD. It's just a tribute from bands to other bands. That's what it makes so interesting. Several songs even have short comments, explaining why bands choose certain songs. The only drawback is the horrible violinsolo of Crimson Thorn in the cover of Stryper's Loud 'N Clear. But that can't withhold me to enjoy this album. Available through HM-mag
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 1998Reviewed by Tony LaFianzaHM magazine mogul, Doug Van Pelt, has put together a tricky tribute record. Usually a tribute record honors one artist's work with cover versions by an assortment of admiring artists. What has happened here, however, is that Van Pelt has asked individual artists to pick any song by any artist they wanted to do, and put it on a multi-artist tribute album. He has ended up with a huge variety of…The Phantom Tollbooth 1998Reviewed by Josh SpencerThis is definitely one of the most interesting compilation ideas done yet. HM got a bunch of bands together and let them pick songs which influenced them to cover for the project. There's plenty to smile over here, as an eclectic mix of "hard" bands cover a wide variety of songs. So much subjectivity is involved--depending on one's taste for the original songs, one's opinion of Christians…
