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Atlas: Reasons For Voyaging

Big must’ve been the keyword for Atlas when they went about recording this debut, evidently much anticipated after their runaway success with first single Crawl. The production of David Nicholas, Hank Linderman and the band is certainly big and polished - a little too much so. The music itself is epic, going from the singles that are suitably big and single-like to big sweeping ballads (Doctor), to big moody numbers (Saving Grace), to big Stairway To Heaven-type guitar solos (Early Warning). Much of this is very familiar sounding (Crawl is Evanescence meets a certain Collective Soul tune), fortunately the male/female combo vox of Sean Cunningham and Beth Campbell provides a point of difference. It’s somewhat alarming that a band with just one Yank in the ranks sounds so American - especially on the hidden track. The flip side is that it will make this album very marketable and local radio play/sales to date are proof of that. I’m surprised that half of pop rockers Zed ended up in this band and have to admit I preferred that group to the current one. Crawl certainly proved to Warner Music they can do a strong single though.

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