Album Review: McStine and Minnemann – McStine and Minnemann

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Two well regarded and highly productive musicians come together to deliver a debut album of theatrical and highly engaging Progressive Rock.

Prog…it can cover a multitude of sins but is too multi-headed to be readily defined. Its roots may be Sgt Pepper and Pink Floyd, but it has expanded like a Big Bang to fly in all directions.

McStine and Minnemann may be an attempt to encapsulate this in a compact form and they damn near succeed.

Marco Minnemann is of German birth and resides in San Diego. He is a master drummer, has played with many other bands, mostly Metal. Most prominent may be the Aristocrats. He provides a masterclass of powerhouse drumming over the whole album.

Randy McStine is a native of America, a multi-instrumentalist and fine singer. Has also played with many other musicians including Joe Satriani and King Crimson. His main vehicle has been an on-going project called Lo-Fi Resistance with many collaborators drafted in.

Let’s start with Your Offense. A fast keyboard/synthesiser melody similar to the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again. The drums come in, matching the pace of the opening. A melodic and powerful tenor voice. Electric guitar enters with some basic rhythm riffs and the song builds in complexity but with a lightness of touch. A blistering guitar solo at warp speed at the back end.

Catrina starts pleasant and melodic, until drum bursts signal a change. A funk bass line changes the tempo. The Voice sounds dark and gothic at first, then moves to melodic.

Top of the Bucket is similar. Fast drum fills. Voice really come to the fore here. More melodic than metal, the whole song a collage of styles but it all fits in perfectly and moves along rapidly.

Tear the Walls Down (No Memories) begins like Black Sabbath in their Paranoia era with McStine sounding like Ozzy Osbourne. Drums lead, melodic guitar riffs, pacifying keyboard washes.

Fly sounds pure scary movie with opening ominous vocal. I’ve got some bad bad news for you/ Fly into the madness baby/ Come along. Guitar drives this one along with surges of power and more Sabbath tones.

Activate has a Seventies soul groove to it. Powerhouse drumming to the fore and guitars then come in and proceed to lay down a Parliament/Funkadelic melody.

The Closer is the quiet one. Mostly great vocal and jazzy piano line. Let’s move on to a new town/ We can watch the cities burn. This one even sounds sunny, Laurel Canyon Seventies soft rock.

Voyager comes back with Dark Metal guitar and voice. Orchestral and operatic overlays like Queen at their bombastic best. The Dark keeps coming back over the top.

Each complex song sounds like a whole album’s worth of songs all compressed into one. But none of this sounds cluttered or leaden. It all moves along at a fast clip. With the whole album timed at 30 minutes, these are all songs at the 3-minute mark. Remarkable.

People who know these two artists will have high expectations and be rewarded. Everyone else will find a melodic Prog-Pop hybrid which threatens to become compulsive listening.

Rev Orange Peel

Watch the 13th Floor interview with McStine & Minnemann here:

Interview: MusicTalk with McStine & Minnemann

           

Rev Orange Peel
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