Customer Reviews

New Promise

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Khymera is fronted by Ex Pink Cream 69 vocalist Dennis Ward. The CD has a modern feel to it and Dennis sings his heart out on this project. I am glad to see more people putting all they have into their music. As for the rest of the band, they are awesome as well. They must of fed off the energy of Dennis or maybe it was vice versa but this is one top release. Standouts are: Looking For You, All That I Have, The Damage Is Done (cover of Unruly Child song)& Tomorrow Never Comes. If you are tired of the same old same old contemporary music on the radio, then pick this up to see what true talent is all about.

2006's A New Promise is album number 2 from melodic rock act Khymera, and finds the band with a new singer at the mic. Kansas vocalist Steve Walsh departed and his replacement is none other than Pink Cream 69 bassist/producer Dennis Ward. I didn't even know he sang before hearing this album. He also handles mixing duties here, but production was done by "multi-instrumentalist" Daniele Liverani.

As with the first Khymera album, A New Promise features a handful of obscure AOR covers in addition to new songs. They cover the Unruly Child song "The Damage is Done", Jeff Scott Soto's "You Can't Take Me (Away from You)" and Don Barnes' "After the Way". The mix of old and new works pretty well, especially given Khymera's particular brand of classic melodic rock. The band has a great 80's arena rock sound that is ideally suited to handling a Soto or Mark Free composition.

Ward does a solid enough job on vocals, but going from Steve Walsh's very recognizable voice to Ward's midrange style is a bit of a let down. Musically though, A New Promise is just as impressive as Khymera. Liverani definitely seems more suited to a band like Khymera than he does in a progressive metal setting.

A New Promise is a better than average melodic rock album that should appeal to most fans of this kind of music. It's definitely not on the same level as Sunstorm or Place Vendome, but if you run across it for a decent price it's well worth checking out.

"Khymera" is a melodic hard rock project released under "Frontiers records" aiming to bring to front some of the latest talents of the Italian melodic rock scene while fronting the project with an authority in the melodic rock genre. "A new promise" is the second album by "Khymera" originally relesed in 2005.

This time multi instrumentalist Daniele Liverani undertakes Keyboards and bass, passing lead guitar duties to young guitar prodigy Tommy Ermolli while drums are once again performed by Dario Ciccioni. Yet the real surprise is the project's new front man; non other than Dennis Ward- most recognize the German rocker as the bass player for "Pink Cream 69", one of the main songwriting forces of "Frontiers records" and master producer for a variety of rock and metal acts, still one would not quite picture him as a lead singer. That is until "A new promise". In fact Dennis is stricktly the lead singer and he does a phenomenal job on the album, the man had kept hidden an incredble mid range AOR voice which -dare I say-reminds one of Jeff Scott Soto.

The album features original material along a couple of cover versions of "Jeff Scott Soto" and "Unruly child". The majority of the album is composed by the songwriting team of Tom and James Martin who have since become key contributors to the songwriting of most projects issued by the particular record label. In retrospect "Khymera- A new promise" turned out to be a very surprising a musical alliance that effectively managed to stand the test of time thanks to stellar songwtriting and amazing performances throughout its thirteen tracks.

I have not heard this album yet, It contains a song " Looking for You", which was written by Don Barnes of 38 Special. Don wrote this song for a record company that got absorbed by another giant. This song was to be released as a solo album project for Don around 89 or 90. I have always been disapointed that Don Barnes was not recognized for his great work on that album. Many great tunes were passed over and sit in some archive because the record company wants to hold his work for ransom. I guess a little of his brilliance will shine through with these artists. If they do half as well on their version of this song, they should have several hits off of this album. Strickly MY opinion.