Shakra - Everest

Published April 06 2009

*=Staff's pick	Ashes To Ashes Love & Pain Let Me Lie My Life To You The Illusion Of Reality Why The Journey* Regressive Evolution Anybody Out There* Right Between The Eyes Dirty Money Insanity* Hopeless

Genre	Hard Rock	Mark Fox	Vocals
Tracks	12	Thomas Muster	Guitar
Runningtime	52 Min.	Thom Blunier	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	Dominik Pfister	Bass
Release	17 April 2009	Roger Tanner	Drums
Country	Switzerland	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Gotthard

Where to begin with this? Shakra is Shakra, and this time around they sound no different than before. If you haven't heard them before, they can be described as a typical swiss hard rock band with quite powerful riffs and very catchy choruses. Switzerland's equivalent to Germany's Axel Rudi Pell, one might say, in terms of sticking to their beaten path and to the winning recipe. The general sound and the way of building the songs are unmistakable, there are only more or less variations in melodies.

If you previously have listened to Shakra, you know what to expect on this, their sixth studio album, as well. Classic, hard rock with melodies de luxe, solid vocals and choruses with a punch, alternating between being standard to being real ear candy. When I first heard Shakra some eight years ago I was impressed and instantly hooked but I am not as easily impressed any longer. It is still very well done and I like the relatively heavy guitars and the fat production, but the songs start to sound all too familiar by now.

The tempo is pretty constant during the album and it's fascinating how many times you can rearrange those verse riffs and get something slightly different out of it every time. Some bands get away with that, some don't, and Shakra is located just in between that.

I know that fans of this genre, and of swiss bands in particular, want it to sound like this and nothing else, so for them this should be a very solid and buy-worthy release. All the ingredients are there, the catchiness level is sky high and the production is as good as ever coming from Shakra. However, I personally feel like it's going a bit on autopilot this time around.

See also review of: Powerplay , Power Ride

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	4	8	8,5	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tommy