The JAR ends up in Sweden right now for some fun Power Glam Rock. Eclipse’s newest album Wired is up for judgment!

Don’t think I forgot the idea was to wander around the world for the next few weeks, so it’s time to find some lesser known (as far as Western audiences go) bands to see what they’re working with. Eclipse has been around since 1999 with 2 of the current 4 members being from the original lineup. Hailing from Stockholm, Sweden – these guys have a sound that many people should be familiar with.

It’s a bit of a Hair Metal/Glam Rock style with some power metal aspects, very much like Edguy and Avantasia. So if you like the upbeat tones of 80s hair metal, driving guitar and a decent high end range on a singer, this could be a band to pay attention.

• Artist: Eclipse
• Album: Wired (2021)
• Label: Frontiers Music Srl
• Total Track Time: 41:18

Roses on Your Grave starts off with a nice rocking beat, drum and guitar driven. And even if it lyrically reads like the ‘acceptance’ stage of a break up, but it’s fun and definitely feels like the song you’d play a bar after the breakup with your buddies while you get smashed to the point of forgetting your name.  Dying Breed continues the enjoyment Eclipse seems to have to cliché sayings like “only the good die young” in the first one, and this one has lines like “this is your life, you only got one shot”. But the corny aspect of the clichés helps and this has a really great riff going into and persisting in the chorus. It’s a hard song to not to dance to. Saturday Night (Hallelujah) this is so 80s my Day Glo Frankie Says Relax shirt just jumped out of the closet. “We Live, We Die, Like it’s Saturday Night” – that sums up this song wonderfully, this is a great song to get hammered and sing karaoke to.

Run for Cover this is the first taste of their Power Metal chops where it takes a fantasy lyrically and the instrumentation has this weird folk undertone masked behind an I Need a Hero instrumentation. I kind of want Van Canto to cover this song. Carved in Stone well talk about a weird strike of 4 Chord Song déjà vu. As soon as this song started I was immediately thrown into Billie Eilish. The opening sounds almost exactly like When The Party’s Over just with more acoustic guitar. Which isn’t bad since the song is a somber step back reflecting on the concept of eventually we all die. A few verses in it starts to pick up into the Power Metal genre of belting the emotional lyrics without really losing the message and then ending abruptly, much like life. Twilight will forever be a word that immediately makes me think of sparkly vampires and bad acting. In my head when the lyrics of “I’m falling down, deep into Twilight” just makes me imagine like every 13 year old girl who said the same thing a nearly 2 decades ago. The song is a definite rocker if you can get passed the word association, unlike me. And then ending with a bit that reminds me of Musetta’s Waltz…or at least the Rent line.

Poison Inside My Heart delves into that Bardic Power Metal tone. It’s stripped down, acoustic and feels like either Bard’s Song by Blind Guardian or anything from the Bad on The Witcher. It starts to drive and drift further from the acoustic tune, but keeps that as an underlying harmony possibly used as imagery of the poison overtaking him. So the acoustic heartbeat is still there, but nearly drown out by the raucous drums, screeching guitar solo and general driving rock of the lyrical cadence. Ending with one last interlude of the acoustic before ending. Bite the Bullet as we’ve seen already, they definitely has a tendency to jump around in a heavily 80s influence Power vibe. This is heavier, like Cinderella and Accept decided to collaborate on a song with an almost cowboy western like bridge/solo before leading into something that sounds like church chanting, and then into the last verse or so of the song.

We Didn’t Come to Lose ahh and there’s another cliché line of “come hell or high water”. Sonically this really sounds like Joan Jett was handing out unused music. Which isn’t a bad thing, I’m just enjoying the trip through an 80s mix tape, with their own twist of course, but the way they can paint in a lot of different atmospheric and tonal colors while keeping the music feeling synergistic is impressive. Things We Love definitely a more straight forward…love song?…I guess. The recurring line of “We Never Let Go of things we love”  I suppose is supposed to be powerful and fun, cause the song is generally in that vibe…I think this is just the most simple and uninteresting song. Dead Inside seems almost contradictory to the overall message of the previous song. The line of “if love can live forever, how come it feels so dead inside my heart” is a little weird. The instrumentation drops out at the right times to get across perceived hollowness, and there’s a drop slide in the solo to help signify the low feeling before the lead guitar picks it back up and tries to end the song strong and hopeful.

Well aside from ending with two awkward songs, as I said during the breakdowns, I appreciated the 80s mixtape aspect. It was very familiar in the instrumentation, topics and song structure given their genre classifications. I really can’t find much wrong with the album beyond how strong they went for most of the album and then just seemed to fizzle out toward the end.

All in all, it was a damn good album, the overuse of clichés and the way they stagnated late in the album is a little disappointing, but I’m also being very critical. Given the fact I wasn’t really aware of the band and just know the genre, it was definitely a good album to get introduced with.

Final Judgment: 6.85/10