Review: Neon Rider – Destination Unknown

Pride & Joy Music (January 22^nd, 2024)

Reviewer: Jason Hopper

Neon Rider is a new project formed by Argentinian guitarists Hernan Cattaneo and Marcos Nieva Green, who both wanted to explore a shared passion for AOR and Hard Rock. They assembled a few musical colleagues who shared their vision and set out to unleash their work onto the world with ‘Destination Unknown‘. While the recording has promise, it ultimately left me unfulfilled and disappointed.

I’ll cut right to the chase and point out the album’s largest detriment…its production. According to the bio, the album was produced by the entire band and mixed/mastered by Marcos Nieva Green. I don’t have an engineering background, so I’ll do my best in analysing what is lacking. I find the entire project to sound too dry, with a lack of reverb that gives percussion instruments that extra kick to fill out the sound and maximize the power of the band. Parts of the album also sound uneven. There’s no greater example of that than the track ‘Unleash Your Fire’. Lead singer Bruno Sangari is mixed WAY too loud, and it results in a drowning out of the other instruments.

The other issue, to an only slightly less degree, is the construction of the songs. They don’t have the hooks that many of their contemporaries have, and when combined with its production issues, it makes the entire recording sound flat. Some decisions stuck out to me as mistakes.  Mr. Sangari has a decent range, but it was a mistake for him to perform the background vocals on the title track at such a high range. It comes off as screechy and ruins the song. Other songs like ‘Standing by the Edge’ have minor chord changes in the chorus that reduce the power of the song at a time when it should have ramped up.

Despite these issues, there are a few strong songs to be found here. ‘Compass Rose’ has the strongest melody and is overall well-constructed. I found myself humming the choral melody while doing weekly chores, so it’s a melody that sticks. ‘My Time to Say Goodbye’ has the best chorus with an effective use of double tracked background vocals and a pitch from Mr. Sangari that both haunting and melancholic, in juxtaposition to his main vocal delivery.

I listened to this album a few times, then stepped away from it for a bit, returning to see if my feelings on the album changed. Unfortunately, they had not. There are simply better bands out there performing songs like this with much better production. A solid producer could bring to light some of the band’s strengths, but if this project were to continue forward, the band must also work on songs that will make the band stand out amongst a sea of bands that have more memorable songs.

Tracklist:

1. Destination Unknown
2. Neon Rider
3. Feel the Magic
4. Unleash Your Fire
5. I Lay My Life in Rock and Roll
6. Compass Rose
7. Surreal
8. My Time to Say Goodbye
9. Standing by the Edge
10. One and Only
11. One Night in the Big City
12. Riders of the Night