Mecca: 20 Years

Frontiers must hold Mecca in high regard to give the band this retrospective overall. This collection is made up of the bands three albums to date, starting with the eponymous debut which surfaced in 2002 and saw Mecca lynchpin Joe Vana, along with some heavyweight AOR luminaries ,Fergie Frederiksen, David Hungate etc craft an album chock full of AOR delights such as `Velocitized`, `Without You` and `Silence Of the Heart`, and many more.

It wasn’t until some nine years later that fans were treated to the follow up album Undeniable which saw the band take a step away from the pure AOR of the debut and take on a more West Coast feel to everything, there was also a change in personnel, this time with long standing AOR `go to` man Tommy Denander to give added weight to Vana`s generally impressive material.

The final album in this collection is 2016`s III carried on the smooth West Coast sounds, and it can be argued is even more laid back than its predecessor, and I would say is the weakest of the three albums in terms of overall quality, and that goes for the production too as I felt it left a little to be desired.

For Mecca completists there are added bonus tracks/demos to be enjoyed across all three discs. For me personally I found Mecca a case of starting out strongly but with subsequent releases offering up diminished returns, but nevertheless that doesn’t really detract from what’s on offer here. I understand a fourth album is in the pipeline, and hopefully it will return to the pure AOR of their debut.

This is a sturdy enough collection of a band that have at times genuinely thrilled and also disappointed me, and it`s one that fans of the genre without having to break the bank and will find many delights to savour.

Track Listing
CD1 (Mecca)
1.Velocitized
2.Without You
3.Can't Stop Love
4.Silence Of The Heart
5.You Still Shock Me
6.Mecca
7.Wishing Well
8.Close That Gap
9.Blinded By Emotion
10.Falling Down
11.Miss-Chevious (Bonus Track)

CD2 (Undeniable)
1.Perfect World
2.Closing Time
3.Ten Lifetimes
4.Life's Too Short
5.I Know
6.Did It For Love
7.From The Start
8.Deceptive Cadence
9.W2W
10.Undeniable
11.As I Walk Alone
12.How Many Times (Bonus Track)

CD3 (III)
1.Take My Hand
2.Unknown
3.Alone
4.Gone
5.Cry
6.A Kiss On The Wind
7.Let It Go
8.Believe
9.Alone (re-imagined version) bonus track
10.Unknown (re-imagined version) bonus track
11.I Know (Demo) bonus track

Added: March 29th 2022
Reviewer: Malcolm Smith
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 623
Language: english

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