Space is the debut album from Italian melodic rock band Hand on Heart. Bassist Alessandro Moschini got in touch to send me a copy of the album to review and by way of an introduction he game me the following brief bio of the band.
Formed in in 2017, The band members are all experienced. Alessandro Moschini and Sergio Leonetti played in the 80s in another hard rock band, G.L.A.S. Alessandro also played bass guitar with H.A.R.E.M., a street metal band from Lucca led by Freddy Delirio, keyboarder of Death SS here as singer and with Charisma, a hard rock project sung in Italian with Damn Freaks’ drummer Matteo Panichi.
Gianluca Niccoli and Alessandro Moschini are also involved in another project: the acoustic duo COFFEE & FLOWERS that released two albums. Christian Evans, an English guitarist living in Tuscany since 1999 over 20 years, played with many local bands.
Hand on Heart has recently finished at the 3rd place at World Songwriting Awards ahead of artists that received nominations at Grammys and has recently subscribed to ISSA.
The band’s influences can be traced back to the hardrock of the 70s/80s of groups such as Van Halen, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Kiss, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi.
So what’s on Space? Nine tracks with a running time of around 35 minutes including a short piano-based instrumental.
I found it a bit of a mixed bag split half and half between enjoyable melodic rockers with some nice chugging riffs, hooks, melodies and clean guitar breaks and the other half being rather generic sounding AOR style ballads, which didn’t resonate with me at all despite repeated listenings.
As for the melodic rockers – I do like them and they did grow on me.
The opener of Roses is quite a good one with the crisp riff and solo, the catchy melody and generally upbeat feel. I’m Lazy, like Roses, is similar though arguably has a bit more bite to it. Agony thumps along with some pace and nice melodic bursts of guitar and the closer of You Are the One is bouncy with nice hooks.
Here’s Roses:
The production is very clear – perhaps too clear as I get the impression that it is so clear it detracts from the understated nature in general.
What I mean by that is the aforementioned tasty melodic rockers seem to be harder songs wanting to be heavier with a little more aggression involved in the delivery. The same applies to the ballads I feel. More “ooopmh” behind them would be nice.
That’s simply my opinion of course and if Hand on Heart prefer the cleaner sound, that’s entirely within their gift.
Space in I think is a generally pleasant listen, does show some promise and if you prefer your melodic rock on the easy side it may be one you’d like to check out.
You can do that from the Hand on Heart BandCamp page as digital and physical formats are available:
https://handonheart.bandcamp.com/album/space