Blog Post
Alta Reign - 'Mother’s Day'
Iain McArthur • 4 April 2021
Album Review
Alta Reign is a vehicle for Jeff Plate (the veteran drummer / percussionist from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Savatage and Metal Church) to release some solo material he’s been working on for a long time. He’s got some high-calibre assistance from selected TSO pals; primarily keyboard virtuoso Jane Mangini whose musical signature is all over this, plus guitarist-of-the-moment Joel Hoekstra pops up as a guest as well.
I’m not sure it will be to everyone’s taste but some folks will love at least some of it. The music can be quite brilliant but it’s also technical and challenging at times with proggy and theatrical flourishes mixed in with some great hooks and melodies. “Witness” is one such track – it starts off like 80’s rock then goes off on a prog tangent for a bit but is one of the ‘hookiest’ tracks on offer. Opener “Shine” is a good place to start. It’s a good riffy and melodic track with an instrumental middle section where all of the players get a chance to, er, shine.
Hoekstra sparkles some magic dust on the seven-minute title track which is one of the strongest here and should deservedly get some attention. “Immortal” might be the pick of the songs though and if there was such a thing as Prog-AOR then this would exemplify it along with “Never Say Never”.
There are ten songs on offer plus two short instrumentals – well, you can’t grudge the man a bit of a drum solo can you? “Always” is the ballad and Savatage guitarist Chris Caffery plays a nice solo on “Rise” but it’s contained within a quite challenging eight-minute song which includes some almost spoken-word passages.
If you sometimes enjoy music that isn’t just verse-bridge-chorus-repeat then I think this is definitely worth checking out. Give it a whirl and see what you think. And check out their Facebook page where Jeff gives some detailed notes on some of the tracks.