Sapphire Eyes – Breath of Ages

Welcome to another slice of Swedish AOR/Melodic Rock! It seems very little time goes by without Sweden/Scandinavia producing more and more melodic musical greatness and this release is no exception let me tell you. I need to be careful here and of course tip my hat to the vocal qualities of the man on vocals Kimmo Blom who is in fact from Finland but only next door geographically.

So, ‘Breath of Ages’ the second and much anticipated album from Sapphire Eyes recently landed internationally in September this year and is somewhat of a supergroup project with many protagonists in collaboration making this a very approachable, easy to listen to set of songs.

It kicks off with ‘My Desire’ which leads me to hearing the intro on keyboards akin to Rick Springfields ‘Affair of the heart’, the comparison ends there however and it is hard not to get hooked on this one from the get go as the melodies are just infectious. Now unlike the self-titled debut where the plan was to use multi vocalists this album has used just one in the guise of Kimmo whose pedigree comes from being the lead vocalist of Urban Tale and Heartplay both from his native Finland, his overall vocal versatility has enhanced this release and taken the sound on even further from their debut. The line-up consists of Emil Knabe – Guitars, Mikey K Nilsson – Guitars, Christer Engholm – Bass, Fredrik Eriksson – Drums and finally Niclas Olsson on Keyboards, who also produced and mixed the album. There also a host of guest musicians, most notably Anette Olzon ex vocalist of Nightwish fame. She duets on two versions of the song ‘I won’t leave with a lie’ which sits in the middle of the release as a ballad then as a bonus track at the end which is the rock version, the latter my preferred listen but the former is still a good track nonetheless but edging more towards the Pop styling of things.

In summation the overall formula and sound of ‘Breath of Ages’ is not anything new in the execution of sound, but it does deliver in the sense of a clean, crisp sounding production with the right mix of guitars, keys and well delivered vocals. If I were to make my pick of songs they would be, ‘My Desire’, ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Alone’, ‘Never Again’ and ‘Maybe’. It’s an extremely catchy affair and a must for fans of AOR/Melodic rock as the sound is very reminiscent of 80’s material, which is no bad thing of course as most fans of the genre long for the old days. With new offerings like this one and with new bands emerging on the scene all the time there is surely plenty to keep all fans of the genre satisfied for some time to come. This for me is a solid 8/10 with I’m sure, more to come from Sapphire Eyes.

RD