If there's one group of people that actually understands what disappointed with your favourite artist means, it's Michael Schenker's fan base. He has a long history of alcoholism and letting it affect his career and guitar playing over and over again, we've lost count of how many times he's fucked his fans over with tour cancellations and sub-par performances. Now as far as his recent recording output goes, he's been steady and with a respectable run by himself doing instrumentals or even his collaborations with Davey Pattison doing blues rock covers, but the last few Michael Schenker Group albums or his last futile run with UFO have not really been that good. And that has really been bothering, and one just had to go back to the classics for a Michael Schenker fix.

What came last year was a big jolt especially. With youtube and the internet spreading the word faster, Michael infamously drinking and playing as bad as a 10 year old at a guitar shop, was not only embarrassing, but also truly disappointing. We really believed it was the end of Mad Mikey's career, whatever was left of it.

I don't know what the doctor ordered, but I'm more than happy to report that not only Michael is clean and back on track, he has even put out a great new MSG album. Released in May 2008, 'In the Midst of Beauty' sees Michael reunite with Gary Barden and also bring in some of the old company. Don Airey is on keyboards, Neil Murray on bass and Simon Phillips on drums. This happens to almost be the same line-up that was on the phenomenal first album except for the bass player (Mo Foster).

The best thing about this is not the all-star line-up, it's about how the songwriting and guitar playing is sounding so rejuvenated. The album has a few unusually (for Schenker) poppy songs in the beginning and right at the end of the album. City Lights, Competition or even This Time are not at all bad songs. In fact, there's a lot of quality Schenkerisms and catchy sing-along moments. Just that the rest of the songs ooze so much of the classic shit, these songs end up being out of place.

The rest of this including I Want You, End of the Line, Summer Days, Night to Remember, Wings of Emotion, Na Na, The One and Cross of Crosses takes you right back to the classic MSG era with roaring riffs, tasty fills, underlying old school keys, solid hard hitting rhythm backbone and some incredibly fluid ripping leads by Schenker. Props to Gary especially, he settles for singing noticeably lower (in the Jorn Lande ballpark now!) at this age and doesn't sound too strained as expected.

This is going to take a couple of listens to sink in, but it's all worth it. This has turned out to be the best MSG album in over 20 years and Michael's best band-thing since UFO's great reunion album Walk on Water. Get this for sure. Also go watch him as much as you can because with Chris Glenn back on bass (though with a huge beer gut. Wayne Findlay is on keys/guitars, Chris Slade on drums), their live set is sounding really great. I hope they capture this and put out a DVD and also that Michael steps it up a notch for the next album and deliver something that'd knock us all down completely. This got us somewhere there but fell a bit short.

Label: Inakustik
Year of Release: 2008