Artist: Winterland
CD: City Lights

Track Listing:
City Lights
Balcony
Lost at Sea.
 

This review was originally supposed to be written by Rock n World's former editor Robyn Wreighley, who wrote the original review of Winterland's Blind CD.

After publishing that review we were contacted by another band named Winterland. This band is based in Australia while the other Winterland is from Germany. 

The Australian Winterland's manager wondered if we would be interested in doing a review of their CD and comparing it to German Winterland's Blind. 

I contacted Robyn to see if she was interested in the assignment, she had left Rock n World last fall to work for a small community newspaper. She sounded excited at the prospect, she had rather enjoyed the German bands CD. 

Since then she had landed yet another job with a music magazine, and has been too busy to write this review. So you are stuck with my take on the differences between these two bands. 

This is a difficult task, because these two bands are vastly different, Germanys Winterland is a progressive Metal, while the Australian namesake has more of a bluesy classic rock sound. 

Comparing the Winterlands, is like comparing Apples to Oranges, they are so vastly different that the job is impossible. It appears the only thing they have in common is their name. 

So what I have set out to do here is to review the Australian Disc and then let you read the original review for Germanys Winterland. 

The Australian disc title is City Lights. It is really a promotional EP containing only 3 songs. 

The first song City Lights has a dark overtone, reminiscent of the mellower side of Bad Company. Indeed the vocals sound a lot like Paul Rodgers, the guitar work is in vain of UFO's Try Me. 

City Lights has a great sound, the ambient guitar riffs really mix well with the vocals. 

Balcony the second track begins with a strumming acoustic guitar, and vocals in the tradition of Van Morrison. This is another great example of the classic rock sound. 

The disc closes with Lost at Sea, the Bad Company sound is really prevalent here. The lead vocals shadow a young Paul Rodgers on tracks like Ready for Love, or Don't let me down. Another slow track, that seems to be the theme for this album. 

Overall this band has a great sound, although it might be wise to throw in some harder songs on their full album release. I found myself waiting for the songs to kick into full gear, while they only got half way there. 

The talent is there, the song writing is good, so I can easily recommend Australia's Winterland for fans of the mellower classic rock sound.

Read the Review of Germany's Winterland - Blind CD