Customer Reviews

Karma

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Every song on here is great the first 2 Tracks "Deal With the Devil" and "Stone Cold Killer" are Hard Rockers all the way with Awesome Guitar Riffs. "Big World Away" is another killer track with a great uptempo driving beat. "Come A little Closer" Has a almost Metal feel to it ala: Judas Priest. The next Track "Pulled Me Under" is a rip roaring fast song kinda like the riff of "Painkiller" incredible song!. then the next track called "Supernova" slows down a bit and has a nice slow groove. The next track "Always Within You" is a Ballad which has alot of Depth and emotion very melodic and then it picks up toward the end with a nice solo.

"Feeding Frenzy" has a Modern rocker approach with a melodic feel to it.
"After all this Time" a real nice bluesy song with a excellent solo by Reb Beach and Kip sounds awesome on this. The Song "Witness' Opens up with some real mellow keyboards and then builds to a driving melodic chorus and then finishes with one of the best solo's in Reb Beach's career! The Bonus track is just a very mellow piano song.

I own everything that Winger has put out and this is one of the best! I would even say My favorite album of the year! Kip Winger's vocals are incredible and Reb's guitar playing is simply amazing.
It's Mature and rocks out! the Production is superb, the playing on all the tracks are excellent. I would say one of the best Melodic Rock albums of 2009 bar none!! a "Must Have" for Winger and Hard Rock fans!

Karma is amazing! I have been listening to this CD almost everyday since I received it a few weeks ago and I am totally blow away! I have a few favorites that I just can't help but keep going back to over and over like Witness, Always Within Me, Supernova, After All This Time, Big World Away but I can honestly say that I enjoy every song. Each one gets under your skin and into your head....enchants you...plays with you and takes you for a spin and away to another place...which is what good music does...alters your reality for the better. :0)

Kip is known for his superb compositions and with this CD there is no exception, he and Reb of course really out did themselves. Musically... just when you think you know where it is going to go....there are little unexpected twists and turns that keep your ears at a constant state of alertness. Lyrically...wow...just brilliant lyrics on my personal favorites like Witness, Always Within Me. I have to say that Supernova is becoming a huge favorite and I am so impressed by the contributions of PJ Winger on that one!

Kip's voice is off the charts and he sings the s#@# out of these songs! His range is incredible and I feel his voice has actually gotten better over the years...which is saying a lot...because that is highly unusual for a rock singer at least in my opinion. Reb's playing is phenomenal .....I mean what can you say...the man morphs with his guitar and plays on another level of consciousness. John's solo is passionate and beautiful on After All This Time, Rod...stellar performances and an artist who shows us a surprising side on bonus track First Ending.

Go BUY this CD and you should buy more than one and give to your family and friends for the Holidays because it is rare that you find such an incredibly talent group of musicians complete an album of this caliber these days. These guys so deserve a success with this CD! It is amazing!

I'm a huge Winger fan, and after reading the reviews, and listening to it myself, i must say, this is ABSOLUTELY, 100% the BEST album of 2009! HANDS DOWN!!

With songs like "Deal With The Devil," "ALways WIthin Me," "Pull Me Under," and "Big World Away," you'll be blasting up the volume like you did when you first heard that awesome "Winger sound!" I Highly recommend this CD to Winger fans especially, but also to New fans of the band, as it is a great start to your further exploration into one of the 80's coolest rock bands!!

SO BUY IT AND ENJOY IT! CUZ I KNOW I DID! =)

I have long considered Winger's album "Pull" one of the best albums in my entire CD collection. It has been a top 5 favorite of mine ever since I first absorbed it in the early 90s. This new album Karma, I dare say, is EVEN BETTER. Why? Because it has more bite and muscle than Pull does. Pull gets the nod in terms of lyrics and emotions. But, Karma just plain ROCKS... it is Winger at their most rocking, without a doubt! The Karma songs are just as great as the Pull songs but the power and intensity is a step up.

I did NOT like the prior album, IV, it was a real disappointment to me. I had to work to find songs I liked and found nothing I loved. Karma is Winger and is everything IV wasn't in all the right ways. Karma has a huge span of songs I absolutely love. I think the two weakest songs are the first two songs and then after that it just hits a stride and never lets up. And to say those first two songs are weak would be incorrect (I just think they are a bit overly cheesy lyrically... opening lines singing about Elvis? Really?), it is just that the songs that come later are so top notch. I keep finding new songs that are my favorite on this one. Is it Pull Me Under? Feeding Frenzy? Come A Little Closer? Big World Away? They are all so great and flawless how can you really choose one ahead of the others?

2009 has been a good year for music from older bands... and I would say Karma is the best album of them all. Winger showcases again how supremely talented they are at every position. The vocals, the guitar, the drums, the bass... and most importantly the songs, are superb! They achieve such a high level of accomplishment it is beyond what most other bands could ever do. Winger was unfairly labeled via Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead) and thus they are still criminally underappreciated by the masses. Anyone who thinks of Winger as just a lightweight hair band is dead wrong and really should check Winger out more starting with Karma... they just plain ROCK!

I am not a huge Winger fan. Yeah, I enjoyed a few songs on their debut album. And even fewer on their sophomore album. When they released PULL though I fell in love with that CD. I still listen to it to this day 16 years later. Not many albums have that staying power. When they finally released IV I was excited. I bought it and honestly didn't care for it. I thought they lost it. When this CD came out I heard good things about it and bought it. And I Am GLAD I did. This kills PULL in my opinion, and Pull is a CD I still like. Every song on the album is great, there is not one single filler.
It is too bad a lot of people wont even hear about this release because it is an amazing album. With all the older bands releasing CDs lately, this is much much better than the Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, etc.. In the last few year I would say only Shinedown's SOUND OF MADNESS and Theory Of A Deadman's SCARS albums come close. Buy this CD and you won't regret it.

I'm not going to go into a long dissertation about Karma. When I saw 29 reviews averaging 5 stars I thought 'Wow...something's happining with this recording'. I ordered it and the reviews are right. It's a 5 Star recording by Winger. I've been listening to Winger since the beginning self titled debute album. Even though they marketed to the mainstream metal in those days, I always thought the musicianship gave them an edge. What really, really stands out, and I believe it really started to become apparent from Pull on, was Kip Winger's song writing and arranging. This is good stuff...buy it...you won't be dissapointed. The reviews say it all man.

If you've followed Kip Winger's career even a day past the "Seventeen" video, you know that the man simply can't write a bad song. Particularly the 00's resurrection of Winger (IV, Karma) and Kip's more esoteric solo work is virtually flawless. Mature, well-arranged song-crafting with impeccable production, and sterling musicianship. The credentials of Reb Beach (now with Whitesnake, Dokken, and some excellent solo work on his resume), and Rod Morgenstein (Dixie Dregs, Platypus, the Jelly Jam) speak for themselves.

Karma picks up where IV left off in terms of it's prog leanings - sneaky little time turn arounds and complicated runs, but capitalizes on the melodic work of both the Sahara (self-titled) and Pull albums. There are two main things to note about this new offering. 1) It's HEAVY. Really heavy - heavier than anything on Pull, which is saying a lot. 2) John Roth. New to the band with IV, Roth has infused a bluesy sensibility to the songwriting, and his solos on this record are phenomenal. A definite asset to the camp.

Can I also say, as I do in every review of a Winger release, how amazing Kip's voice is after all these years? It's an ongoing frustration to hear guys like Jagger, Walsh, and the like, warbling away to the accolades of critics everywhere, and Kip can't seem to get arrested. But ye gods, his Voice! It's amazing, and his range continues to impress. It's certainly got a lot more bite to it than usual. Here's a man who knows how to capitalize on his strengths.

In short, this album is the culmination of everything the band has excelled at on the previous four releases. A very tight, focused, heavy, and sensible step in the right direction for a criminally underrated and stereotyped band. It's good to have them back again.

It's a great album. I'm writing from Italy and the distribution made Karma available a couple of weeks before the US release, so I had the opportunity to listen to this album A LOT of times now. It's great, it's amazing a real threat for hard rock fans. It has everything, even the weakest tune of the album, the medium tempo "Supernova" is growing inside me and I like it more each day. Karma impressed me at first listening and immediatly stucked on my head with its heavy, hooking riffs and brilliant compositions by Kip and the guys. I can say that it's a good example of an album that it's direct, heavy, but not stupid, at the same time deep musically and exceptional under the composition point of view. Karma has a very good clever balance, a formula that really should help the band to get more fans, because it fuses the brainy side of the band with its hard side beautifully and with an accent on melody which is always a good thing. Kip still writes in a magnificient way, he seems to be able to find each time the perfect turn for the tune, in a way a lot of musicians would dream to do. A friend of mine pointed out to me in Karma there are not all the acoustic guitars that graced old albums from the band and I agree. The song are less complex in the arrangements, but they are absolutly not "simplicistic". They hit you because the distorted guitar wall is really huge, but Kip managed to keep the sound of the band articulated and dense, intact even without acoustic tapestries underneath. I really loved and still love IV of course, the latest Winger album. I think it's another perfect chapter in the history of this band which a lot of people too early categorized as another hair metal combo that could be forgotten. They're not, absolutly they're not and karma is another brilliant prove for a real musicians' band. In terms of compositions, IV was a little more adventurous and experimental than Karma, this one is a little more heavy and direct, ... but these are all details. The band is in fantastic shape and has produced with Karma another true gem that will stand the test of time for sure. An album that you will listen over and over without being tired of it, ... an album that every band in the world would be proud of. Fantastic!

I own all of Winger's CDs except IV (which is on my shopping list). I almost *never* listen to the first two...I suppose they're good for what they are, which is hair-metal, but I'm more of a progressive-metal fan and want a little more intelligence and musicianship in my music.

I bought "Pull" years ago...got it used for $3, figuring "well, if it has one good 'Headed for a Heartbreak' kind of song like their first CD, it'll be worth the $3." Money well spent, as the whole disc is phenomenal.

I think "Karma" is actually better. The band is tighter than ever, Kip's vocals have actually improved with age, and the songs strike that great but rare balance of melodic-and-catchy yet interesting from a musicianship perspective.

It's probably worth the purchase price just for "Witness"...Reb Beach's 2-minute-long guitar solo at the end of that song is one of the best I've heard in a while...technically great, full of emotion, and never gets boring. It's almost like a combination of the solos from Dream Theater's "Under a Glass Moon," Prince's "Purple Rain," and Living Color's "Cult of Personality" (with a touch of attitude a la Tore Ostby from the AMAZING bands Conception and Ark (Trust me: You NEED Ark's "Burn The Sun" CD)).

Simply put, if you're even *looking* at a Winger CD listing, you should own this disc.

I was a little let down by the band's previous release Winger IV. But they have returned to their original form with Karma. The sound is more like their debut and In The Heart Of The Young. The melodies are there and Reb Beach's solos are top notch. This feels like the '80s all over again. Very impressive release. Standouts from the disc, "Deal With The Devil" "Big World Away" "Come A Little Closer" "Pull Me Under" and the ballad, "Always Within Me." Hats off to Kip and the boys, for this jamming release. They never sounded better!