EXTREME: III sides to every story (HARD ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Two years after a Pornograffitti sold several million copies, thanks to the intersidereal hit "More Than Words", the Bostonians of Extreme are back with their third album: III Sides To Every Story. Not much has changed in the band since two years and the line-up remains the same. The music, however, has definitely gone modern with this concept album abandoning Glam.

The pair Gary Cherone-Nuno Bettencourt who is in charge of the whole composition of the album offers us a multi-faceted and committed album in terms of lyrics. Indeed, three parts compose this "III Sides To Every Story". The first six songs are gathered under the title "Yours", the next three in the chapter "Mine" and the last three form "The Truth". The three sides of each story are thus illustrated in this concept-album strongly inspired by Ecclesiastes, whose texts are interwoven in several songs.

The theme "Yours" gathers mostly rock and powerful songs with a big zest of fusion as Extreme knows how to do. War ("Warhead"), peace between cultures and races ("Rest In Peace", "Color Me Blind"), the perversity of certain political approaches ("Politicalamity") as well as a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr ("Peacemaker Die") are reviewed.

The next chapter, "Mine", offers more orchestrated and intimate pieces. Seeking an answer to the dramas and tragedies of life, this chapter exposes the spiritual search that allows man to hold on, to console himself or to hope. God is almost challenged and summoned to give answers in the song "God Isn't Dead?", intense and poignant as a prayer.

But the truth seems to be quite different as the third part "The Truth: Everything Under The Sun" announces. The only truth that seems indisputable, not subject to beliefs and superstitions, is life, nature and this universe in which we evolve and act. And the sentence "For one that dies, another's born" says it all: life replaces death but remains faithful to it, like a plant reborn on an already fertile ground.

We will have understood that these stories are only human existences. Each one of us builds his own story and his own questionings, directed towards the others ("Yours"), curled up on himself ("Mine") and, anyway, looking for a certain truth ("The Truth"). Beyond the somewhat naive and cliché "let's love each other" message, this album paints a lucid and rather pessimistic picture of humanity, but itself capable of beautiful things.

Even without being interested in the content of the lyrics, this album is musically and rhythmically a major success. The shadow of Queen is obvious (especially the epic "Who Care?" : orchestration signed Nuno and sublime rise in emotion). Without being progressive, the musics are varied and dense, often embellished with brass, violins, sound effects (ion of an extract of speech of M.L.King) and magnificent instrumental parts.

Gary Cherone has never sung so well in this style that suits him perfectly. The choirs are precise and really bring to the melodies. And what can we say about Eddie Van Halen's spiritual son, Nuno Bettencourt, if it is not that he is of a frightening efficiency as much harmonically as rhythmically. The soli of the Portuguese virtuoso are always of an insolent creativity ("Our Father", "Color Me Blind", "Who Cares?", listen to the instrumental part of "Cupid's Dead": rhythmically it is a headache). Only Paul Geary performs the minimum, printing a linear tempo and a too neutral touch.

After an eclectic Pornograffitti but rather glam-FM-fusion oriented, Extreme goes into high gear with the very ambitious "III Sides To Every Story". And the result is sublime. This record is a hard-rock-fusion classic that hasn't aged a bit (except maybe the slightly old-fashioned keyboards on "Seven Sundays"). If you stopped at "More Than Words" to judge Extreme, don't hesitate a second more and let yourself be enthusiastic by this album that touches genius. - Official website

EXTREME

III SIDES TO EVERY STORY

A&M

HARD ROCK