SOTO
Inside the Vertigo
earMUSIC
2015
It’s funny how JSS, or Jeff Scott Soto as he’s better known, former singer of too many bands and projects to mention without sacrificing a couple of paragraphs, is always trying to re-invent himself and sell himself not as a middle-aged rocker, with a rather decent but slightly shot, from over use and abuse voice, (at least as witnessed in recent lukewarmly attended solo dates). He’s obviously apart from the rock/metal side, have a liking for more rhythmical and soulful things and that “ambition” to try and emulate them or “fuse” them with his rock roots, has led him in a string of solo albums, that were a little too different for most of his “followers” but failed to also get him a younger audience.
Smartly he took up, TSO and produced bands as means to stay afloat, in an ever changing and increasingly hostile record business and now he’s trying to do his more modern, angst venting/ridden, down tuned “thing”, that might or might not have come out of a small amount of jealousy towards, the apparent “success” or at least not complete failure of Adrenaline Mob, a similar outfit, led by musicians people would probably associate with classic metal or even neoclassical metal bands, trying to get a piece of the action from the American “teen-angst” metal genre, call it X-“core”, and substitute X, with whatever, hard/metal etc… in reality these hybrid, rarely seems to come up with more than a handful of decent tunes and are really quite misguided attempts for a possible “commercial” break, that never seems to come.
SOTO’s “Inside the Vertigo”, is not too different. Quite heavy, obviously down tuned numbers, to give JSS a better chance at singing over them and a style that tries too hard to be modern, with these chunky repetitive riffs that are supposed to make the songs, more “groovy”, but usually end up, just making it, tiresome. Just in order to try and not lose, the “traditionalists” there are some strategically places solos and short leads, from Jorge Salan, the band’s lead guitarist. They don’t manage to completely change the “fact” that this is not exactly what the “older” fans, might want to hear.
Using the same members of his current solo band, makes sense, as they all know each other, musically and personally, so it’s easier than assembling a star-studded team, that would also probably want some form of return/payment, in order to partake to a project such as this. Still he manages to haul in a good number of famous friends/colleagues of his like Gus G (Firewind, Ozzy), who seems to return the favor of Jeff singing on his solo album, Jason Bieler (Saigon Kick), Mike Orlando (from the aforementioned Adrenaline Mob) and Joel Hoekstra (Night Ranger/TSO, Whitesnake), all of whom perform on their penned tracks for the album. Others appearing as guests/co-writers are Casey Grillo (Kamelot), Connor Engstrom, Tony Dickinson, Leo Mancini, Hugo Mariutti and Gary Schutt. A fine gathering of talent, but the point is to create some good and memorable songs and not to have an arm long list of guests.
Here things are a rather mixed bag of chips...
“Final Say” the opener, of the album is highly rhythmical, and modern enough, but it actually feels like a more normal, JSS song, just with a very modern instrumentation, so this one is really an example of this bizarre hybrid, you get, a mid-tempo song that's not too bad, with a drummer that just goes off the deep end from some point onwards, however the song is not bad...
“The Fall” continues waving the same flag and while the verses seem like they’ll lead to some great chorus, when it arrives, it feels more like an extended – different verse. The various effects and edits used to modernize the song also fall rather short of expectations. Not all that great then.
“Wrath” begins with a riff that’s classic enough, but at the tuning it is, sounds darker and meaner, JSS, here opts for a more “classic” and melodic approach and this combination seems to work, better... much better actually.
“Break” begins with some funky bass, lines and even if it tries to get a more edge, in reality it’s another “melodic” song, given a quite different more modern mantle of orchestration. The adapted style works here because of the great dynamics during the chorus, which is rather good. The solo also, would have not been here, if this was completely “modernist”…
“Narcissistically Yours” is a bit funny, trying to “preach” things and it’s question/answer “chorus” is also a bit of an oddity. Not bad, but unusual and I don’t know if it’s for the better.
“End of Days” is twice as long as anything else on the album – clocking at almost nine minutes and while it gets off a rather smooth beginning it progressively gets more dramatic and after a solo, it becomes a lot louder and more classic rock/metal influenced, to sit too well among the rest of the material on this album. It’s one of the better songs on the album, but a little out of the climate, I guess.
“Inside the Vertigo”, the title track, also based around a slow riff is a lot more typical of the retro-styles followed by JSS in the past, only with the drums and bass, sounding that much more modern than the rest. There’s also a modern repetitive riff, prior to the more classic sounding solo, but overall the song tends to stylistically sound more rooted in the past, rather than in the future.
“When I’m Older” is a ponderous, semi-ballad, with sweeping keyboards that flood the whole thing and is not a million miles away from other solo stuff that Soto has done in the past...
“Trance” sports a heavy d-tuned riff, just trying to sound “current”, but being also a little “spaced out”, makes it not really possible to categorize that easily.
“Jealousy” is another funkier number, but sells itself a little short... there are some nice melodies, but the overall mix of old and new influences is not too balanced... the chorus, saves it from becoming too boring, but I’m not too sure about how I feel about it, bar another nice short solo that's not too bad, but sticks out like a sore thumb, quite different from the rest of the song’s flow.
“Karma’s Kiss” is also based around an ultra-heavy riff, that’s almost floor scraping with a few more melodic verses and one of them turning into a chorus actually... it repeats about twice, that’s how long this sequence is, but it’s overall quite likeable as a whole.
Finally “Fall to Pieces”, the album’s closer is an energetic mid-tempo, with a nifty but fuzzy riff and JSS, more or less doing some shout y singing over the verses, giving it a somewhat different character from the rest of the songs...
Overall, this might have felt like a rather typical JSS solo, but the man, decided to dub it as something slightly different, considering it a group effort – but still promoting himself through his well-established identity. He also tried to make it a bit more modern, by going for a more rhythmical and modern style, that feels a little misguided and doesn’t always work that well.
It’s not as bad as a “Beautiful Mess” was, which seemed to suffer from poor songwriting as well, but the overall consensus is not that much better. Longtime fans might want to add this album, because it’s JSS, voice that they are used to, but there’s not a plethora of songs on here that one would consider classic, not even the more melodic ones.
Smartly he took up, TSO and produced bands as means to stay afloat, in an ever changing and increasingly hostile record business and now he’s trying to do his more modern, angst venting/ridden, down tuned “thing”, that might or might not have come out of a small amount of jealousy towards, the apparent “success” or at least not complete failure of Adrenaline Mob, a similar outfit, led by musicians people would probably associate with classic metal or even neoclassical metal bands, trying to get a piece of the action from the American “teen-angst” metal genre, call it X-“core”, and substitute X, with whatever, hard/metal etc… in reality these hybrid, rarely seems to come up with more than a handful of decent tunes and are really quite misguided attempts for a possible “commercial” break, that never seems to come.
SOTO’s “Inside the Vertigo”, is not too different. Quite heavy, obviously down tuned numbers, to give JSS a better chance at singing over them and a style that tries too hard to be modern, with these chunky repetitive riffs that are supposed to make the songs, more “groovy”, but usually end up, just making it, tiresome. Just in order to try and not lose, the “traditionalists” there are some strategically places solos and short leads, from Jorge Salan, the band’s lead guitarist. They don’t manage to completely change the “fact” that this is not exactly what the “older” fans, might want to hear.
Using the same members of his current solo band, makes sense, as they all know each other, musically and personally, so it’s easier than assembling a star-studded team, that would also probably want some form of return/payment, in order to partake to a project such as this. Still he manages to haul in a good number of famous friends/colleagues of his like Gus G (Firewind, Ozzy), who seems to return the favor of Jeff singing on his solo album, Jason Bieler (Saigon Kick), Mike Orlando (from the aforementioned Adrenaline Mob) and Joel Hoekstra (Night Ranger/TSO, Whitesnake), all of whom perform on their penned tracks for the album. Others appearing as guests/co-writers are Casey Grillo (Kamelot), Connor Engstrom, Tony Dickinson, Leo Mancini, Hugo Mariutti and Gary Schutt. A fine gathering of talent, but the point is to create some good and memorable songs and not to have an arm long list of guests.
Here things are a rather mixed bag of chips...
“Final Say” the opener, of the album is highly rhythmical, and modern enough, but it actually feels like a more normal, JSS song, just with a very modern instrumentation, so this one is really an example of this bizarre hybrid, you get, a mid-tempo song that's not too bad, with a drummer that just goes off the deep end from some point onwards, however the song is not bad...
“The Fall” continues waving the same flag and while the verses seem like they’ll lead to some great chorus, when it arrives, it feels more like an extended – different verse. The various effects and edits used to modernize the song also fall rather short of expectations. Not all that great then.
“Wrath” begins with a riff that’s classic enough, but at the tuning it is, sounds darker and meaner, JSS, here opts for a more “classic” and melodic approach and this combination seems to work, better... much better actually.
“Break” begins with some funky bass, lines and even if it tries to get a more edge, in reality it’s another “melodic” song, given a quite different more modern mantle of orchestration. The adapted style works here because of the great dynamics during the chorus, which is rather good. The solo also, would have not been here, if this was completely “modernist”…
“Narcissistically Yours” is a bit funny, trying to “preach” things and it’s question/answer “chorus” is also a bit of an oddity. Not bad, but unusual and I don’t know if it’s for the better.
“End of Days” is twice as long as anything else on the album – clocking at almost nine minutes and while it gets off a rather smooth beginning it progressively gets more dramatic and after a solo, it becomes a lot louder and more classic rock/metal influenced, to sit too well among the rest of the material on this album. It’s one of the better songs on the album, but a little out of the climate, I guess.
“Inside the Vertigo”, the title track, also based around a slow riff is a lot more typical of the retro-styles followed by JSS in the past, only with the drums and bass, sounding that much more modern than the rest. There’s also a modern repetitive riff, prior to the more classic sounding solo, but overall the song tends to stylistically sound more rooted in the past, rather than in the future.
“When I’m Older” is a ponderous, semi-ballad, with sweeping keyboards that flood the whole thing and is not a million miles away from other solo stuff that Soto has done in the past...
“Trance” sports a heavy d-tuned riff, just trying to sound “current”, but being also a little “spaced out”, makes it not really possible to categorize that easily.
“Jealousy” is another funkier number, but sells itself a little short... there are some nice melodies, but the overall mix of old and new influences is not too balanced... the chorus, saves it from becoming too boring, but I’m not too sure about how I feel about it, bar another nice short solo that's not too bad, but sticks out like a sore thumb, quite different from the rest of the song’s flow.
“Karma’s Kiss” is also based around an ultra-heavy riff, that’s almost floor scraping with a few more melodic verses and one of them turning into a chorus actually... it repeats about twice, that’s how long this sequence is, but it’s overall quite likeable as a whole.
Finally “Fall to Pieces”, the album’s closer is an energetic mid-tempo, with a nifty but fuzzy riff and JSS, more or less doing some shout y singing over the verses, giving it a somewhat different character from the rest of the songs...
Overall, this might have felt like a rather typical JSS solo, but the man, decided to dub it as something slightly different, considering it a group effort – but still promoting himself through his well-established identity. He also tried to make it a bit more modern, by going for a more rhythmical and modern style, that feels a little misguided and doesn’t always work that well.
It’s not as bad as a “Beautiful Mess” was, which seemed to suffer from poor songwriting as well, but the overall consensus is not that much better. Longtime fans might want to add this album, because it’s JSS, voice that they are used to, but there’s not a plethora of songs on here that one would consider classic, not even the more melodic ones.