Artist: Geff
Album: Land Of The Free
Type: Album
Label: Metal Heaven
The brainchild of guitarist Ralf Jedestedt, Geff is a project that brings together an all-star cast drawn from the cream of the Swedish Rock/Metal scene including members of Hammerfall, Yngwie Malmsteen and other luminaries. Purporting to play a streamlined, mature brand of melodic hard rock, it goes without saying that the rather limp, anodyne sonic wallpaper the band pump out is as uninspiring as this mission statement would suggest. I don’t like to jump in feet-first with an outpouring of negativity and kinder souls would pay lip-service to the A-grade musicianship, crisp production, polished vocals and all the other stuff you’d expect of a release like this. I however am NOT such a person and indeed feel that the considerable list of teeth-grindingly hateful things about this CD are of far more relevance to the readers of this site.
It’s hard to know where to start – the whole album is drenched in a smiley, happy-clappy ‘fun’ rock atmosphere that comes across as insanely smug, not to mention unbelievably wet. It’s about as gritty as a scoop of sorbet with none of the bite and sounds like a group of pilled-up Swedes covering ABBA songs whilst flicking through catalogues selling garden furniture. It’s so middle-aged, middle-class and middle-of-the-road it’s painful. Nevertheless, all this could be forgiven (to a degree) if Geff were actually capable of writing the kind of well-composed, hook-laden epics that Journey and their ilk managed to compose but this is where the band fall flattest. Bland, inoffensive ‘rock-flavoured’ pop numbers abound on ‘Land of the Free’ and there really is little that stands out in a positive fashion – the pre-chorus of ‘Living Generation’ is reasonably rousing, ‘Crusaders’ marches along with energy and ‘Fool’s Paradise’ is strangely reminiscent of massively underrated 80s Canadian rockers Kick Axe - but that really is it. Up against such pap as the sub-Alice Cooper/Bon Jovi ballad ‘Mr Cain’, the insipid ‘Grey Goo’ and the ill-advised blues swagger of ‘Pennywise and Pound Foolish’, they are battered into submission.
‘It’s a wonderful world, it’s a wonderful day, it’s a wonderful life’ croons vocalist Goran Edmann on the utterly risible ‘Fruits of Life’ – however, when listening to Geff, it certainly doesn’t feel like it.
http://www.metalheaven.net
Frank Allain
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