Review ICONIC ‘Second Skin’

A few weeks ago, Skills presented their debut and now it is a next group of renowned musicians coming together as Iconic. The band consist of Nathan James (Vocals) (Inglorious), Michael Sweet (Guitars, Vocals) (Stryper), Joel Hoekstra (Guitars) (Whitesnake), Marco Mendoza (Bass) (Thin Lizzy, Black Star Riders, The Dead Daisies, Journey) and Tommy Aldridge (Drums) (Whitesnake).

The guys recorded a debut album that will be released via Frontiers Music on June 17th, 2022. Two songs have been revealed already – ‚Run (As Fast as You Can)‘ and ‚Nowhere to Run‘. The third single was launched yesterday and is called ‘All I Need’.

All three songs provide an excellent overview of what Iconic has in the offer. The pumping ‘Nowhere to Run’ finds a great balance of hardness and melody. Driven by a powerful beat the song reminds of the heydays of melodic metal and it’s a Dokken-vibe that echoes with ‘Nowhere to Run’. It’s a lot of ‘running’ on the album with an opener entitled ‘Run (As Fast as You Can)’. The dynamic start into the album finds a prolongation in blues-based rocker ‘Ready For Your Love’.

The softer and heartbreaking moments are integrated in ‘Worlds Apart’. The tune isn’t real rocket-science and follows more the standard principles. AOR is what listeners get offered, a description that also works for ‘This Way’. The second half in general loses a bit compared to the first five tracks. The bottom half of the tracklist provides solid rock songs that miss the final punch.

‘Second Sin’ is a solid hardrocker created by specialists of their craft. Technically on a really good level, the album misses some liveliness and agility. One can get the feeling that the musical handbrakes are still on and when reading the list of band members expectations were higher than the final output.