I Love Journey...But I HATE Baseball Cards...

There are two good things about doing a review featuring Journey

1) I can talk about listening to Journey without risking getting things thrown at me.

2) I have a justifiable reason to post a Family Guy clip



Now that that's over with...Journey is back (most of them anyway) with Revelation, their thirteenth studio album and first with new lead singer Arnel Pineda, perhaps the most famous cover band singer ever, and poster child for YouTube fame (Pineda was discovered when Neal Schon found YouTube videos of his Journey cover band). With the exception of Pineda as a vocal clone of Steve Perry, there isn't much else in the way of a revelation on this album. From start to finish, this album is straightforward Journey, for better and for worse.

Revelation opens as you would expect a Journey album to open, with a balls-out power ballad. "Never Walk Away" most certainly falls into the category of what's good about Journey. It was on the strength of this song alone that I opted to give the rest of the album a chance. From there it's a mixed bag of sing/shout-along rockers best heard from your car speakers with the windows down, and the arena friendly love songs that let the band take a breather. There's nothing inherently bad about Revelation, or any Journey album for that matter, it's just that after awhile, it gets a bit tired, and I feel the need to hear something different, which Journey can't necessarily provide. The instrumental closer is a nice attempt, but it comes far too late. The core of Revelation is good in 10-15 minute spurts, but headache-inducing in increments longer than that. It's kind of like actually being in the 1980s.

But that's just the first disc. Journey earns its keep on the second disc, which is essentially the Pineda-fronted Journey performing 11 of the band's biggest hits. I don't know if these recordings were meant to prove to hardcore fans that they're still the same band, or simply a way for Wal-Mart to milk an extra couple bucks out of buyers, but it's brilliant. I think there should be a rule that anytime a band changes lead singers, they must release recordings of the new lead singer singing the old favorites. Would this not be a) a great way to keep skeptical fans happy that the band hasn't changed, and b) a great marketing scheme? Someone give me a good reason why this would suck.

Anyway, Revelation comes down to this; if you LOVE Journey, you'll enjoy the album. If, like me, you're a casual fan, you'll break even. If you don't like Journey, you weren't gonna buy the album anyway.

Final Score: 6.5/10
Highlights:
Journey - Never Walk Away
Journey - Wheel In The Sky (Arnel Pineda Version)

==TJ==