Sunday, February 21, 2016

SAGA: "Pleasure & The Pain" [Reissue]

Rating: Re-issue
Label: earMUSIC 2016
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

The re-release of Saga's twelfth studio album, Pleasure & The Pain, originally released in 1997, now holds extensive liner notes and two live bonus tracks (Time To Go. You're Not Alone). And as always, the live tracks doesn't match the album. Perhaps not entirelly true as they did record a new version of 'You're Not Alone' for this particular album. It's actually a quite horrible version and not worthy the praise of their smashing original. Bow your heads in shame, fellows.

The band didn't know which foot to stand upon during this era and as Sadler recalls, "For a while, we weren't quite sure of our position. What the fans wanted to hear. What we had to do to stay competitive". Several tracks are far from their traditional sound. Gone were most of their keyboard work as they basically sold out to the latest fashion instead of bringing it home via passion. Raw and dirty guitar work as you could almost compare the difference in style and sound to U2 and their work prior and post the "Zoo" days. And yes, there's a track titled ' Welome To the Zoo' on here. The booklets include original fan material, press pictures and more.

Final verdict: The worst of all the Saga albums? One thing's for sure. They sound a little too pleased with themselves. Thinking that the 90's generation must love us now that we've ditched our original sound. What were they smoking? Most of the tracks are utter rubbish to be completely honest.
www.sagaontour.ca

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