Audio CD review:
UFO - Force It

UFO - Force It

Band: UFO Title: Force It Rating: Release Date: 26 January, 2000 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Let It Roll 2: Shoot Shoot 3: High Flyer 4: Love Lost Love 5: Out In The Street 6: Mother Mary 7: Too Much Of Nothing 8: Dance Your Life Away 9: This Kid's Including Between The Walls

Customer Reviews UFO continues their line of excellent albums ) UFO's fourth studio album. Force It (1975. INTRODUCTION: UFO had their musical beginnings in Great Britain in the late sixties. Taking their name from a legendary music club, the band recorded two albums in the early seventies with a weird-but-still-excellent space rock sound all their own. These two albums, featuring guitarist Mick Bolton, were great albums but did not sell well or do well on the charts. Not long after their release, Bolton parted ways with the band. This was not the end of the band by any means, but rather, a new beginning. After Bolton left, the group had Scorpions guitarist Michael Schenker play for them as a temporary stand-in. The group was so satisfied with the young German guitar virtuoso, that he became a permanent member of the band! The band would record many albums with Schenker, including many of those that would be deemed the band's finest works! The first of these was 1974's Phenomenon. How does 1975's Force It, the second one to feature Schenker, measure up? Read on and find out! OVERVIEW: UFO released their fourth studio album, Force It, in 1975. The album featured Phil Mogg on lead vocals, Pete Way on bass, Andy Parker on drums, and Michael Schenker on lead guitar. Tracklist consists of Let It Roll, Shoot Shoot, High Flyer, Love Lost Love, Out In The Street, Mother Mary, Too Much Of Nothing, Dance Your Life Away, and This Kid's (Including Between The Walls. ) REVIEW: When Michael Schenker entered UFO, EVERYTHING changed - and all for the better, too. The band took on more of a straight-up hard rock sound. They had never sounded this good before. During the band's heyday with Michael Schenker from 1973-1979, they attained an all-time high they would never again reach. And the Force It album continues where Phenomenon left off. The music is taken in a slightly more commercial edge with this album, but the group manages to maintain their classic hard rock sound all the way through. Let's take a look at the tracklist to Schenker's sophomore album with the band, and see how it fares! -SIDE A- -Let It Roll: UFO knows how to start an album. This song is, simultaneously, the best and most popular one on this album. Talk about starting things off on a high note! When UFO had Michael Schenker, they knew how to rock hard. Schenker's riffs in this song are some of the best he would ever serve up with any band. Any UFO fan, casual or die-hard, knows and loves this song - and with good reason. -Shoot Shoot: Classic rock is the best way to describe this song. It's an interesting song because it's the happy medium between a seventies hard rocker and a seventies pop rocker. The fusion of the two musical extremes makes for an excellent song, and it's not hard to see why so many fans of the group like this one. -High Flyer: For this one the band cracks out the acoustic guitars and slows the music way down. If you've heard Space Child from Phenomenon, the album that came right before this one, you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this song. Schenker's acoustic guitar playing is extremely underrated and overlooked, and this song shows you why. Phil Mogg's vocals on this one are excellent, as well. A great song. -Love Lost Love: This is what you get when you combine pop rock with hard rock. These are two extremes that are difficult to combine, but UFO does it very well. Even if it does have an unusually poppy sound for Schenker-era UFO, it still manages to be an excellent song, and one of many from this period that people overlook. -Out In The Street: This song was a huge hit for UFO, and not surprisingly - it's one of the greatest songs they ever recorded. It's a rock ballad of sorts, and a damn good one, too. Take slow and melodic verses, and combine them with a chorus that has that vintage hard rock sound only UFO could do, and the end result is very satisfying. One listen to this song, and it's easy to see why it became the hit it did. -SIDE B- -Mother Mary: Here's another song that became a big hit for the band - more proof that their transition to a more commercial-oriented musical sound wasn't necessarily a bad thing, after all. You've got those classic hard rock riffs from Schenker and Phil Mogg's classic vocal stylings, along with the expertise of the rest of the band. The final result is fantastic, and a song that definitely deserves its status. -Too Much Of Nothing: It seems like every album by every band has at least one song on it that is a truly underrated gem that never got the proper credit, and isn't likely to. On Force It, this is that song. The song rocks hard, and features some very interesting-sounding guitar distortion from Schenker - something this band didn't use a whole lot of. It definitely stands as a strong song, and it's a damn shame that big-time UFO fans are just about the only ones that know this gem exists. -Dance Your Life Away: Here we have another example of classic hard rock with that pop-oriented vibe - that classic hard pop rock sound that UFO managed to make all their own in a few rare cases. The chorus is unusually poppy for a UFO song, but that doesn't make it a bad song by any means. Not the best song by any means, but far from bad. -This Kid's (Including Between The Walls): Not only does UFO know how to start off an album, they know how to finish one off too. Essentially, this track is straight-up, hard and heavy rock. If you thought some of the songs on this album were a little too poppy for your taste, this is the song that will be the redeemer for you. It's not hard to see why this hard rocker is considered a quintessential UFO classic. OVERALL: Overall, Michael Schenker's second album with UFO is another excellent one. It isn't quite as good as Phenomenon before it, but it is still a damn fine classic hard rock album. And besides, the fact that the group took their sound in a more commercial direction means that FIVE of these nine songs became hits for the band (compare that to two out of ten on Phenomenon!) If you're new to UFO, the Michael Schenker albums are the best place to start your collection. Although the band's collaboration with Schenker only lasted a few years, there is no denying that the music created by the band in this period is nothing short of excellent, and difficult to top musically. Final verdict? This album is highly recommended! EDITION NOTES: Sadly, UFO albums are extremely difficult to find in America. Some of them (generally only the newest albums and the compilations) can be found in some American stores, but if you want the classic albums, expect to do a lot of hunting high and low. They are well worth buying, but more likely than not, you'll have to order than online due to their scarcity in the United States. . BEST! It is literally a masterpiece!. I have owned about 8 versions of this ranging from 2 cassettes to 2 LPs and one CD. UFO's best studio album Not so this one. While "Strangers in the Night" was a great showcase for how great the Schenker edition of this band could be, their studio albums were inconsistent and always included a couple of weak songs. This album has ferocious rockers, a good ballad or two, and finishes off with a great instrumental to cool you down. Michael Schenker is brilliant on this album, and the production is solid (also unlike most of their other albums). Get it. . . The closest thing to a must-have there is "Between the Walls", so you have to let how bad you need this be decided by how much you love UFO. A UFO fan should not be without this album. . You can see a complete list of all UFO discography, or go back to the UFO tabs