Magna Carta
2001
Balance
About This Album
Balance is Tempest's first studio album of new material since 1997's The Gravel Walk. The band endured several personnel changes in the years following The Gravel Walk: The 10th Anniversary Compilation introduced new members John Land (bass) and Dave Parnall (guitars) in 1998, while the following year the group's independently released Live at the Philadelphia Folk Festival welcomed new guitarist Todd Evans, who displayed a harder rocking style than his predecessor Rob Wullenjohn. Balance finds Tempest again adjusting to the addition of key members, namely bassist William Maxwell and fiddler Jim Hurley, who replaces the effervescent Michael Mullen (who rosined up the bow ever since the group's 1996 Magna Carta debut Turn of the Wheel). Only singer Lief Sorbye and drummer Adolfo Lazo remain from the band's late-'80s inception. With a keen sense of traditional Celtic and Norwegian music, Tempest is a rock band that prefers to pepper its songs with those influences and not vice versa. Balance is perhaps the group's most hard-rocking effort to date, particularly due to Evans' crunching electric guitar. At times he conjurs up comparisons to Richie Blackmore; other times the virtuosity and eclecticism of Lanny Cordolla surfaces.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,7 and 9)

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