Return Of The Pride White Lion Released – 2008 by Frontiers Records Track List 1. Songre De Cristo 2. Dream 3. Live Your Life 4. Set Me Free 5. I Will 6. Battle At Little Big Horn 7. Never Let You Go 8. Gonna Do It My Way 9. Finally See The Light 10. Le Me Be Me 11. Take Me Home (European Bonus Track)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

White Lion are back minus all original members except vocalist Mike Tramp to release this effort ‘Return of The Pride’. It’s a bold move to name a “comeback” after the most successful White Lion album to date, 1987’s ‘Pride’. Either way times are very different now so as a follow up of course it’s going to sound different to its predecessor. But maybe the only thing it has in common is actually the word “Pride” in the title and nothing more.

Mike Tramp over the years since White Lion hasn’t been afraid to try new things and go where he dared musically and this album has a fair amount of maturity due to that fact. But without Vito Bratta on guitar, a certain musicianship and dynamic flavour is lost. Not that this is a bad album, it has some good songs and interesting moments. But I’m just not convinced it’s memorable enough to stick out from the pack of rock releases this year. But even so it’s hard to be too critical.

Tramp sings strongly and confidently in a clear mid-range way that doesn’t date the overall sound as perhaps other bands may have done. White Lion songs always had a bit of the dramatic about them and that’s no different on the two epic tracks on this disc. The 8 min opener ‘Songre De Cristo’ and 7 min ‘Battle At Little Big Horn’ provide a lot of light and shade through acoustic sections, some experimental shifts and some hard rockin’. Both tracks have some interesting transitional parts and cool solos.

The rest have a fairly melodic rock style with keyboards and a few other elements not associated with early White Lion material. ‘Gonna Do It My Way’ is more of a simpler rocker with a layered chorus and a feel good vibe as is ‘Let Me Be Me’, that probably  also acts as message to people like me comparing ‘Return’ to the old stuff. ‘Live Your Life’ is an up tempo track that could find its way onto a bad party movie soundtrack but ‘Set Me Free’ is probably the best of the rest. It has a darker, thoughtful deal happening with some attitude.

Look, this really isn’t bad at all, in fact it’s good. But that’s it, just good. The hooks aren’t huge and it doesn’t get me as excited as I expected. Maybe it takes a bit of time but I’ve had this album for a little while now so I’m not expecting it to jump out at me anytime soon. Then again, I like stuff I can really enjoy myself to and this in all honesty is probably more for a quiet, low key, introspective time. Something I’m not accustomed to doing so much any more. It’s hard to really make my mind up one way or another but ‘Return of The Pride’ is middle of the road and not at all bad.

Visit: www.returnofthepride.com - www.myspace.com/returnofthepride

DirtyRock.net review by ‘Jonni Starr’ 2008

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